And if you think that's contrarian, wait until you hear his next five choices!
Adm. Rickover-approved, too, which makes it particularly annoying when the MSM implies he was folksy dumb. Evil scum.
GPS. NREL. A ton of electronics/telecoms/computing stuff. The Big 5 military procurement projects - i.e. the sinews of the modern US military, for good or ill. Microbrewing, apparently. Legitimising human rights as a suitable topic of diplomacy.
Something about the man really gets wingers into a froth. I just don't get it. Is it that he has to be a bad guy in order to make Reagan that much more awesome?
5: I think it's because he likes Jesus without being a colossal asshole about it.
I'm sure that's part of it, but there must be more to it as well. Carterphobia was shared by people like Alistair Cooke and Neil Young, who were scarcely your archetypal shitheads for Jesus. I never understood it, except that maybe he wasn't noisy enough about American exceptionalism.
The Camp David Accords.
Deregulation of airlines, trucking and railroads.
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
SALT II.
Paul Volcker, for good and for ill.
Dude suggested people wear sweaters as a cheap way to stay warm. Obviously a Communist.
7: To be honest, it's mostly down to him succeeding the Betrayed Midwinter King Nixon and preceding the Glorious Summer Sun King Reagan.
5
Something about the man really gets wingers into a froth. ...
I found the whole I will never lie to you bit annoying. As being a pointless lie in itself.
OT: Matthew Sweet, like a lot of us, has inexplicably become very old.
13: Wow. Girlfriend came out 20 years ago? WTF, time?
12: Nothing gets people into a froth as much as pointlessness.
WTF, time?
Damn you, space-time continuum!
There are huge numbers of people associate who Carter with nothing but the grain embargo and big teeth. And the grain embargo is either taken as evidence that Reagan was right about how dangerous the commies were (i.e. they are so evil we can't even sell them food) or as evidence that Carter was willing to cut their income* to try to look tough before an election.
*Grain being a bit fungible, I doubt it cut prices that much.
Also he legalized small-scale brewing, which led to America becoming the second best beer brewing nation (after Belgium) rather than one of the worst.
U.S. grain farmers mostly drink mass produced beer, but I'll grant you that I really enjoy the great proliferation of beer since then.
18: Oddly, isn't J.C.* a teetotaler?
* Hendrik "Let me tell you about proportional representation again. Where are you going?" Hertzberg mentioned once that Carter's staff referred to him by those initials with affectionate knowledge of the boss's foibles.
18:
Horst: [threatingly] We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine.
Burns: [recoils in mock horror] Oooh, the Germans are mad at me. I'm so scared! Oooh, the Germans!
OT: On the rare occasions that I muse about literary criticism I tend to doubt poor old Harold Bloom's shibboleth about the anxiety of influence, at least as absorbed through secondary and tertiary sources, but reviews of the work of Joan Didion by middle-aged and younger women make me reconsider.
21: Mmmm... the Land of Chocolate....
22: This is the "kill your mothers" phenomenon of women authors. To hear Virginia Woolf tell it, every writer with a vagina before her own personal self was an insane, ignorant whore who bravely scratched out a lost anonymous message to the beyond on a rock with her jagged fingernails. So sad about all those stupid whores who never got a chance to be brilliant writers like me. I feel so bad for them.
[A]n insane, ignorant whore who bravely scratched out a lost anonymous message to the beyond on a rock with her jagged fingernails.
Gwyneth Paltrow is Emily Dickinson, Countess of Monte Cristo. Christmas 2012.
"She's the belle dame sans merci ... of Amherst."
24 is an extremely ungenerous reading of A Room of One's Own, which has a very good argument to make about the material conditions of creative work, but Woolf seems almost purposefully ignorant of the fact that, for two hundred years or more before her own time, there were always prominent women writers who were critically and popularly esteemed. Yes, it was harder for them. But they weren't just once-in-a-century psycho geniuses tortured by the gift inside them. They were professionals.
WTF, time?
I had one of these last night. Was watching An American Werewolf in London (far stupider than I recalled, or maybe just an odder mix of comedy and horror) with my wife last night when she commented on the quality of the special effects--so I looked it up, it was made thirty years ago! So Griffin Dunne's no longer a young guy coming into his prime?
reviews of the work of Joan Didion by middle-aged and younger women make me reconsider
Do tell? I have conflicted feelings about her, because while I quite enjoy reading her work, I never quite trust her.
25: I, for one, would palely loiter to see that.
I'm pretty sure deregulation would have happened with or without him. Airline deregulation, for example, was put on the agenda by Ted Kennedy.
28: I can never tell whether they envy more the readership or the materia of her successful prominence.
I have read books and books of Joan Didion, and I couldn't tell you what they were about, or what she thought about anything. (The only thing I remember specifically is that she thought the fact that people died at Altamont was bad.)
29: Attic/Victorian asylum, madwoman scorned in, revenge of, profit, Oscars.
Since this is the literary thread: over the last week or two I found reading The Golden Notebook to be a relatively enjoyable way to while away some plane flights. Should I read anything else by Lessing?
Also, it's pretty common for presidents to do impressive foreign policy stuff these days, because they have so much more prerogative there. Domestically, though, Carter accomplished less than Obama, I think.
I liked the part where he teamed up with Rambo and the freedom fighters of Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union.
36: Mumble let's not even discuss Desert One mumble.
Public opinion about Carter has to be almost entirely determined by the hostage crisis, surely? Conservatives seemed to experience the whole thing as a personal attack on their manhood.
Oddly, isn't J.C.* a teetotaler?
Yeah, but Billy (famously) was not.
I couldn't tell you what they were about, or what she thought about anything
This is exactly it. She isn't forthright about her take on anything, and then manages to present all her observations as if they were somehow oh, just my idiosyncratic little observations. Oh and now I have a headache, I think I'll lie down.
Carter's most important contribution was being a cultivator of groundnuts, simultaneously alienating the paleo vote and Flippanter's anti-bean crusade.
How far outside respectability is it to believe in the October Surprise conspiracy, and that Reagan's crew are traitors? Pretty far, I'm guessing.
A better question: how far outside Unfogged respectability is it?
42: Kind of hard not to believe it actually.
I think the highly divided opinions about Carter have less to do with his policy achievements and more to do with the image of masculinity and leadership he presented. To people like me and Stanley, he projects an unbelievable amount of common decency, humility, and good sense. The exact same traits make other people see him as an emasculated wimp who believes everyone should castrate themselves.
This is just extending the insight of 5 to every aspect of life. He loved Jesus, but wasn't an asshole about it. Some people think not being an asshole is the essence of Jesus. Others see the Jesus Jimmy Carter talked about as the wussy guy from the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Carter's actually policies were a mix of liberalism and conservatism that don't quite make sense. But he totally made people worry about the rise of bearded faggots who want to help poor people.
42, 43: Did Reagan's team show themselves to be particularly subtle negotiators/plotters once in office? Iran/Contra was pretty hamfisted.
42: I think it is at least plausible, but I haven't dived into the evidence since the 80s, when I was a teenager willing to believe every evil thing about Reagan anyone ever said.
(The only thing I remember specifically is that she thought the fact that people died at Altamont was bad.)
And, "You can't just leave a body on the highway, it's immoral."
I like Didion but I recently re-read a couple bits from Political Fictions and found myself impatient with them -- her writing and observations were both excellent but the idea that politics is absurd theater feels both commonplace, these days, and not a particularly helpful observation. Of course, since I had started at the beginning, that was from a piece written in 1988, and I think it was ahead of its time.
Oh and now I have a headache, I think I'll lie down.
That's cruel but oh, so recognizable. I haven't read that much Didion, but so much of her work is about human fallibility -- her own as well as that of others. She writes so frequently about the gaps between words and intentions and actions.
How far outside respectability is it to believe in the October Surprise conspiracy, and that Reagan's crew are traitors? Pretty far, I'm guessing.
It would be utterly lunatic to suggest that Reagan and some of his top advisors conspired secretly and illegally with the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to break US law, undermine US foreign policy, and help US-hating terrorists in 1980.
Everyone knows they didn't start doing that until, ooh, 1985 or so.
Legitimising human rights as a suitable topic of diplomacy.
Though there are some important caveats.
when she wrote about that 5-year-old girl tripping on acid I remember thinking, will that experience be really discontinuous with the experience of being a 5-year-old? as I recall it, being a little kid is frankly a lot like tripping all the time. also, people shouldn't dose 5-year-olds. I got drunk at that age and the adults thought it was funny; apparently drunk/stoned/whatever little children are uniquely hilarious. I happily have not had the opportunity to see this. except this crazy family we knew where everyone had a stash they were maniacally shifting and hiding from all the other siblings/parents/, including the 7-year-old. but I was only 9, so whatever.
||
Bring the popcorn!
Edgy Dude defends his close personal friend, Niall Ferguson with resistance from many, including zungu-etc
Interesting it is, me remembering one of his areas being the turn of the last century and his passionate defense of Teddy Roosevelt.
Remember my thesis that it is a Liberal Empire raining down death from the air. Athens vs Sparta, you know.
PS:Apparently Congress is giving Obama Forever War Powers on US soil this week. Whatever. And Naomi Klein is paranoid and lacked sufficient evidence. But Niall? That guy is terrific
|>
50: Not to analogize, but that link seems rather similar to some of the stuff about Carter that one turns up in the freshly-fertilized fields of the right-wing rubbish sphere: most prominently, that by even engaging dictators and authoritarian massacrists he is somehow condoning the very activities that he engages them to halt (slaughtering people, etc.). That he has not been able to obtain Cloudcuckoocandyland terms from people like Raoul Cedras, even while not taking time out from negotiations to comment to the media about what a foul wretch the general/president/dictator is, doesn't seem quite as contemptible as I think is being suggested.
Not to analogize, but that link seems rather similar to some of the stuff about Carter that one turns up in the freshly-fertilized fields of the right-wing rubbish sphere
It's true, I should have appended some more caveats to that. I do think his decisions regarding Indonesia and East Timor deserve to be questioned (and that was what I was searching for when I found that article) but there was a bunch of pure innuendo in that one.
55: He wouldn't have wanted it that way.
56. My thought exactly. If ever there was an exception...
I don't think that Carter was either (a) a liberal or (b) a good President or (c) up to dealing with some serious crises of his day and is therefore (d)just about as responsible as anyone for the rise of Reagan and the resulting mess, despite being well intentioned. He really wasnt a very good President by just about any measure, including foreign policy (he basically started the Reagan era defense build up). OTOH I respect the notion of a pro-Carter backlash, which I guess is the point of the OP.
52: Wow. The first comment gets it right. "Really? Niall Ferguson? Really?"
58 neatly summarizes my own ambivalent opinion of Carter.
James's 12 captures something I personally found annoying, but I don't think the rightwingers were particularly pissed off about Carter's sanctimony. Rightwing ire traces to the fact that Carter liked war and oilmen too little, and minorities too much.
I'm a Yglesian determinist on political economy, and would argue that Carter's poor reputation is largely the result of the poor economy he presided over.
59: Yeah, everything else seemed kind of redundant.
34: Hmm, that's my favorite, though now that I think of it I haven't read very many of her novels. Parts of Mara and Dann were interesting, but maybe only if you're into stories about post-apocalyptic teens. Now I'm off to put some of her stuff on hold at the library.
I'm also on hold for the new Didion, in large part because I want to see how she thinks about her daughter's adoption.
52,59-- I believe there's some passage in the bible (the middle part somewhere) "lie down with your friend who's an ass, and you will look like an ass."
The Bible also says don't eat shrimp, but I suspect that Leviticus just wanted all the shrimp to himself.
AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHHH!!!
Barney Frank is retiring!
The singing dinosaur one or the one in the House?
The singing dinosaur doesn't even have a last name.
67: If you pledge to PBS, the last name is written inside the tote bag you get.
68 - He's 71 and has been doing this for 30 years, and maybe he hopes for a cabinet position in a second Obama administration. I think he's slightly more pessimistic about winning the House back next year (the Texas redistricting thing that happened was an enormous own goal by Republicans) and is bored in the minority, doesn't want to introduce himself to a new set of constituents, and wants to leave in a presidential year so Fall River turnout doesn't screw his Democratic successor. Farewell, Barney! Your knowledge of parliamentary procedure will be missed.
70: maybe, maybe. I bet he's pissed about losing New Bedford. Maybe he just isn't interested in running a real campaign. He's been basically safe for so long he hasn't had to pretend to like talking to people for decades. Maybe he just doesn't feel like trying. He has a ton of cash, though, he could easily win even in the new district. Oh well. It's a shame.
He should have run for Teddy's seat.
71 - I think the new district is still something like a 58% Obama district; Frank or any other competent Dem could probably win easily. But "71 years old and tired of it" has a lot of explanatory value, I think.
the Texas redistricting thing that happened was an enormous own goal by Republicans
Wait, what?
Barney Frank will be missed. We need more unapologetic, no-nonsense liberals like him and Bernie Sanders.
72: maybe. I'm ever more fond of the "Losing New Bedford" theory.
I'll miss Barney Frank, too. Maybe he's retiring to pursue a television pundit career, which would be fun for the rest of us.
How far outside respectability is it to believe in the October Surprise conspiracy, and that Reagan's crew are traitors?
I don't doubt that Reagan's people would have, but the analysis I've read from the Iranian angle was mostly that the Ayatollah released the prisoners out of personal animosity and spite towards Carter. Not that the two theories are mutually exclusive, mind you.
73 - The Texas legislature pushed through a very aggressive gerrymander, as have the Illinois and North Carolina legislatures. Unlike Illinois or North Carolina, however, they violated the VRA; the map was overturned by the 5th Circuit, and the court-drawn map probably gives the Democrats three additional seats instead of taking one away. There was a separate screw-up by the Republicans in North Carolina, where they botched the arithmetic on their map and didn't account for something like 400,000 voters, but I don't know what the outcome of that will be.
77, cont. - The VRA holding wasn't much of a leap, given that the Justice Department lawyers turned up emails from various figures within the Texas GOP explicitly discussing how they could minimize the effect of Hispanic voters.
How far outside respectability is it to believe in the October Surprise conspiracy, and that Reagan's crew are traitors?
I can easily believe that Reagan's people might have tried. What I can't believe is that rational Iranians would have gone for it (agreeing to delay an achievable agreement on the release of the hostages in the hopes of getting Reagan elected).
What people have forgotten, in the wake of Reagan's landslide, was just how close that 1980 election was until the final week before election day. The final pre-election public polls were calling it too close to call. A huge number of undecided voters broke decisively for Reagan in the final weekend before the election, creating his landslide.
So to believe in the October Surprise, I would have to believe that the Iranians were willing to turn down a possible deal and massively piss off the guy who was actually in charge of US foreign policy for at least the next 3 months, and had a 50/50 chance of being in charge for the next 4 years, in favor of doing a deal with a guy who had a 50/50 chance of not being able to deliver squat. What kind of rational negotiator does that? It doesn't matter what Reagan was willing to promise them - if he didn't get elected, he couldn't deliver anything worth mentioning. And it should have been equally obvious to the Iranians that their maximum leverage over Carter was before the election, when a deal might have sealed his reelection.
So my conclusion is that either the Iranian side of the negotiations was massively dysfunctional or deluded, or else the negotiations proceeded more or less as they would have independently of whatever Reagan tried or didn't try to do. The Iranians may have made some nice diplomatic noises in Reagan's direction to try and get some credit for a process that was already failing for other reasons, but I don't see them taking whatever he said as a reason not to negotiate with Carter.
Re: Barney Frank, I hate to admit it, but McMegan sorta has a point on this one.
I'm not a fan of Maxine, but that McMegan post is basically uh oh scary crazy black woman oh noes.
81: Yeah, it is still McMegan we're talking about, after all. But as a matter of substance, it is regrettable that Maxine is in line for the post. Barney was effective as chairman and as ranking member in no small part because he knew his stuff, and his adversaries knew that he knew it, and all attempts to dismiss him foundered on that reality.
80, 82: Conservatives have little in the way of a leg to stand on when it comes to condemning the other party's useless buffoons.
83: Au contraire, nobody knows useless buffoons better.
A few of my friends are happy to see Frank go; they're bitter about his advancement of LGB issues at the expense of T issues, roughly. "Social justice is not going to come from cis white men"
"Social justice is not going to come from cis white men"
Yes, it's not like there are a lot of them.
34, 62:Since this is the literary thread: over the last week or two I found reading The Golden Notebook to be a relatively enjoyable way to while away some plane flights. Should I read anything else by Lessing?
Yes, you should. But I seem to remember some of the other books being... a bit chillier, perhaps. I agree with Thorn that Mara & Dann and its sequel were good. I liked The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World too. I loved The Sweetest Dream, although you may find it covering too much of the same ground as Golden Notebook. Love, Again was also fantastic. I've tried a few times to read her Canopus scif-fi series, and each time it failed to hold me. I haven't read her fictionalized autobiography.
Barney Frank will be missed. We need more unapologetic, no-nonsense liberals like him and Bernie Sanders.
The notion that Barney Frank was anything like as liberal as Bernie Sanders is a testimony to the power of image over reality. Waspish, witty, and gay is a sitcom version of liberalism. Barney was also significantly overrated as a legislator.
Maxine Waters will almost certainly not be the next ranking/chair of Financial Services (I think she would have ended up about as good as Barney, if a lot less quotable). Carolyn Maloney probably will be, which could be a real problem.
McMegan continues to be an idiot.
Barney Frank will be missed. We need more unapologetic, no-nonsense liberals like him and Bernie Sanders.
The notion that Barney Frank was anything like as liberal as Bernie Sanders is a testimony to the power of image over reality. Waspish, witty, and gay is a sitcom version of liberalism. Barney was also significantly overrated as a legislator.
Maxine Waters will almost certainly not be the next ranking/chair of Financial Services (I think she would have ended up about as good as Barney, if a lot less quotable). Carolyn Maloney probably will be, which could be a real problem.
McMegan continues to be an idiot.
Out of curiosity, why presidential, Ike?
82
... Barney was effective as chairman and as ranking member in no small part because he knew his stuff, and his adversaries knew that he knew it, and all attempts to dismiss him foundered on that reality.
This short YouTube video (which I have linked before) of Frank spouting nonsense on the House floor makes me doubt he in fact knew his stuff. Seems to me he was just another of the housing lobby's men in Washington who liberals like because he happened to be gay.
90: He won the war in Europe. He about had to become president at some point.
91: Shearer, that video is from 2005. Not many people in 2005 had realised that there was a housing bubble in the US. Frank was wrong but not uniquely wrong.
The same year, Alan Greenspan said there was "no sign of a nationwide housing bubble" and Ben Bernanke said that the rise in house prices reflected "largely reflected strong economic fundamentals, such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households."
Two years later (!) Bernanke was still saying "fundamental factors--including solid growth in incomes and relatively low mortgage rates--should ultimately support the demand for housing, and at this point, the troubles in the subprime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader economy or the financial system".
93
Shearer, that video is from 2005. Not many people in 2005 had realised that there was a housing bubble in the US. Frank was wrong but not uniquely wrong.
It wasn't just that he was wrong about the bubble but that his argument to the effect that housing was safe because it wasn't leveraged made no sense at all.
I think Frank pretty consistently was a see no evil cheerleader for the housing industry. Did he ever go against the real estate lobby in a significant way?
90: extra layer of work-related paranoia.
93: not an excuse for Barney Frank any more than it is for Greenspan or Bernanke. I would rate those three as Greenspan by far the worst, Bernanke the best, and Frank somewhere in the middle. Don't think any of them deserved to keep their jobs. Of the three, I think Bernanke has the deepest understanding of his own culpability.
The Texas legislature pushed through a very aggressive gerrymander . . . however, they violated the VRA; the map was overturned by the 5th Circuit, and the court-drawn map probably gives the Democrats three additional seats instead of taking one away.
The Texas AG is trying to get the Supreme Court to throw out the 5th Circuit's maps. If, god villing, the new maps stand, it means I get to have Lloyd Doggett as my rep once again! I heart him.
You can trust 95, because it's Eisenhower. Oh wait, there's no reason at all to trust 95.
his argument to the effect that housing was safe because it wasn't leveraged made no sense at all.
His argument was that housing didn't involve the same degree of leverage as the dotcom bubble, and was thus less dangerous; which was generally true. It wasn't 30-to-1 leveraged, which is the kind of thing you might see during the dotcom business.
Of course, housing was still dangerous, as we all found out.
By 2005, 3% down on a house was relatively common. That's 33 to 1 leverage.
here's a nice song about Mr Carter: Jimmy Carter Says Yes.
http://ok-cleek.com/blogs/143/108195597864586872/
A different (satirical) song about Carter.
I should add that I don't dislike Carter.
I find him basically sympathetic and, for what it's worth, Robert Scheer's profile of him in Thinking Tunafish Talking Death is one of the best pieces of political journalism that I've read (searching for that I find that he's written a newish book Playing President: My Close Ecounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush which looks like something I should read).
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Carter giving back the Holy Crown of Hungary to the Hungarians. It was taken by the Nazis, and recaptured by the Americans, who kept it after the Communists overcame Hungarian resistance. Carter figured whether Communists or not, the government of Hungary was made by Hungarians, and pretty friendly to outsiders, too. So it gave it back.
My wife and I visited Hungary several times. Once, while in a museum where the Crown was held (it's since been moved to the Parliament building), a woman told us very fervently in pretty good English that "Mr. Carter, for you Americans, he gave us back our heritage. We will never, never forget that."
You can win a lot of hearts that way. But hey, why not drop drones on people, instead? Just as influential in their way.
The notion that Barney Frank was anything like as liberal as Bernie Sanders is a testimony to the power of image over reality.
My point in 74 was not that Barney Frank is as liberal as Bernie Sanders, but rather that to the extent that each is liberal, they are unapologetic about it.
98-99: no money down, infinite leverage, wasn't that uncommon either. One reason why 27 percent of American homeowners are now underwater on their mortgages.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Carter giving back the Holy Crown of Hungary to the Hungarians.
Well, look where that got them:
The draft is remarkable in more than one way. ... it begins with a preamble of unprecedented length, titled National Avowal of Faith. ... declares Christianity as crucial for the foundation of the nation ... also describes the nation in cultural, not political terms: "We solemnly promise to preserve the intellectual and spiritual unity of our nation, torn apart by the storms of the past" ... It also refers to the concept of the „Holy Crown" - the medieval crown of the Christian Hungarian kings - as the embodiment of the constitutional continuity of Hungary and of the „unity of the nation". ... the "Holy Crown", odd as it seems in a republican constitution, also implies a reference to greater-Hungary ambitions ... the government enacted a law that gives access to Hungarian citizenship to ethnic Hungarians ... which could very well result in a further shift in the electorate favoring the right. ... The preamble is not intended as merely a solemn declaration: In Art. Q III the draft provides that the constitution is to be "interpreted in accordance (...) with the Fundamental Law's National Avowal of Faith", and also "with the achievements of our thousand-year-old Hungarian Historical Constitution." What the legal effect of this will be is totally unclear at this point...
(Note: I'm not actually suggesting returning the crown mattered one whit. I just wanted to bring up an underreported bit of recent constitutional ugliness.)
98
His argument was that housing didn't involve the same degree of leverage as the dotcom bubble, and was thus less dangerous; which was generally true. It wasn't 30-to-1 leveraged, which is the kind of thing you might see during the dotcom business.
This is basically the opposite of the truth which is one reason there was a lot more colllateral damage from the collapse of the housing bubble (compared to the collapse of the dotcom bubble).
There are legal restrictions on the amount you can borrow against stock limiting leverage. But as pointed above 100% (or close) financing was common in the housing bubble. I believe 97+% financing is still available.
I blogged about Casey Serin (a notorious example of a housing market speculator) here . In a couple of cases he was able to obtain more than 100% financing (albeit illegally in the form of under the table cash back from the seller at closing).
And this ">http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer/"> link (warning completely unreadable color scheme) describes how during the bubble years in California you could buy a million dollar house for $270 down, pull out several hundred thousand dollars in cash out refinancings over the next few years and then just walk away.