Thanks for your replies. Enjoyed our conversation. Seriously.

I’m sure we’ll “talk” again.

Regards,

John Kemp

Take it easy

At the risk of bordeom, let me explain something to you.

In 1976, I was a HUGE Jimmy Carter supporter; contributing to his campaign, trying to convince my friends & co-workers of his potential & even visiting his damn peanut farm in Plains, GA. I thought that Carter was “providential;’ having been sent to us for delivery from the Watergate era.

In four short years, I “morphed” into a Republican conservative with no hesitation. Carter was “on top of the hostage situation,” just as he was “on top” of the economy; that was his PROBLEM. He had absolutely zero management skills & could not delegate cleaning of the toilet to a subordinate which of course was his main weakness. The only person in the Carter entourage who knew what he was doing was Brother Billy who spent most of his waking hours drinking “Billy beer” & urinating on the White House lawn.

You people can bloviate all you want; you have no idea what you are talking about. Reagan made more decisions in a day having had two naps than Carter did in a month. Whoever wrote “paralasis of analysis” knew Carter pretty well.

The number of communist countries increased during each decade of the twentieth century until the one begining in 1980. During Reagan’s eight years, the number of communist countries ACTUALLY declined.

The deficit, which is the only thing you amateurs can hang your hat on, was caused by the Congressional Democrat geniuses that Reagan had to work with; George Mitchell, Tip O’Neill, “Scoop” Jackson, etc. Reagan’s legend is all the more remarkable because of the morons he had to work with.

“Revisionism” is a hallmark of Democrats. As Lincoln said, “you can fool most of the people some of the time.” I hate to tell you, but you are not fooling me.

Not to confuse you with facts, a disease for which you evidently are terminally afflicted, but you might just possibly ask yourselves how Carter could go from 297 electoral votes in 1976 to 49 in 1980. Believe me, if you are anywhere close to my age (55), it ain’t too difficult to figure out.

Wake the hell up & smell the damn coffee. If you lack the damn sense to get in out of the rain, buy an umbrella. Quit blaming the rest of us because you’re always wet.

So -
you believe that bluffing is a valid forgien policy?

“Star Wars did work. The Soviets thought we could do it, and made themselves go broke trying to counter it.”

“When Gorbachev’s key scientific advisor told him that SDI was not viable, Gorbachev saw no point in making it a bone of contention. In other words, when the Soviets took SDI seriously, as Reagan had hoped, it only caused Gorbachev to be less willing to engage in serious arms reduction agreements.”
“The Reagan-era defense buildup did contribute to ending the Cold War, but the causal connection is more indirect than described in the conventional wisdom…The Soviet Union never increased its military spending to match the rate of the Reagan buildup and hence avoided exacerbating the defense burden on the Soviet economy.”

Fear of a rocket shooting laser didn’t cause the collapse of the U.S.S.R. -
that is ridiculous, our Pres. posturing in Germany didn’t cause the collapse either -
very simplistic, black and white, thinking to explain such a massive global struggle.
(Ignore reality while burying your head in rhetoric.)

“Millions upon millions of soldiers, refugees, diplomats, activists, saboteurs, reformers, union members both behind the iron curtain and in the west, intellectuals, freethinkers, environmentalists, protesters, writers, artists, most of all innocent bystanders, and on and on and on, of ALL political stripes (even communists themselves) fought, agitated, where tortured and died in the battle of attrition to bring down the dark age known as communism. ”

A long struggle caused the breakup of the U.S.S.R. along with the concept of a “correlation of forces.” -
but that would take a more complicated view of an intricate society,
stick with your laser theory,
ignore that they were in the red long before the arms race because the U.S.S.R. bankrupted itself over many issues and over many years, Gorbachevs appointment, his reforms, glasnost, perestroika, democratisation, ethnic unrest, economic inefficiency, historical atrocities, the war in Afghanistan, Chernobyl, formation of NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, the Berlin Airlift, subversive activities, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, high oil prices of the 1970s, backward industrial base, Reagans masive spending which dramatically increasing the U.S. federal deficit, SDI (it played a part in falsely demonstrating U. S. technological superiority), the Reagan administration’s support for the mujahideen (that’s working out great), drastic fall in the price of oil in the 1980s, grassroots activity, an “inefficient internal mechanism that sold goods to its people at a price that had no relationship to the cost of development, manufacture, and distribution”, lost touch with the workers, -
“Reagan contributed positively to the end of the Cold War, but his role was just one of several essential factors and his positive contributions were not always the result of taking a hard-line stance.” (Jeffrey W. Knopf), -
support for a military buildup pre-dated Reagan coming to office, Reagan increased our risk of going to war because of the massive arms build-up (not the opposite), protest on behalf of peace and arms control, the peace movements of the 1980’s (succeeded in moderating Western policy in a strategy of reciprocity) -
failure to integrate computer technology into their economy, rising alcoholism, -
and you’re claiming it was a laser,
should I go on?

“If you’re talking about inflicting sheer military and economic costs, Hitler did far, far more damage than Reagan…”
Saddam and Iraq…etc…on ans on…

“Communism failed because communism is a failure…notice how little they talk about communism now that they have terrorist bogeymen to replace it!”

RightWing history:
“We must arm the Taliban! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must arm Iraq! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must go to Beruit! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must flee Beruit! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must bomb Iraq! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must not assist the enemies of Saddam as they’re slaughtered! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must fight drug lords by arming drug lords! Disagree and you’re a traitor! Bush must go to Somolia! Disagree and you’re a traitor! Clinton must leave Somolia immediately! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must not go to Rwanda! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must blame Clinton for Rwanda! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must not bomb Bin Laden, that distracts from Clinton’s sex life! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must be nice to Sudan even though it’s harboring Bin Laden, we have oil companies there! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must not fight Milosovich! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must bomb China, Vietnam, the entire third world, no wait, we must export our jobs there! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must never apologize to China, I’m sorry, China! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must send foreign aid to the Taliban! Disagree and you’re a traitor! I failed to stop the Taliban from attacking us, it’s all YOUR fault! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must invade North Korea! No, we must invade Iraq! The rebels we allowed to be slaughtered will help us! We’ll all be dancing in the streets within days! Disagree and you’re a traitor! We must invade Syria and Iran, no, never mind! We WILL find WMD, but we never said Iraq had WMD! Disagree and you’re a traitor! The UN is evil, evil, evil, hey, why won’t the UN to send us cannon fodder? Disagree and you’re a traitor! Did I call you an axis of evil, Iran and North Korea? Sorry, that was only because you couldn’t threaten me with WMD at the time!”

Jimmy Carter is finally calling their bluff…

Would you like to go over “tricle down” next?

How Reagan tripled the national debt.
How his policy had nothing at all to do with conservatism.
George Bush was right, -
Reaganomics was all “smoke and mirrors” based on “other people’s money.”

Now, as far Carter. the person, I believe he, unlike the chickenhawk we have in office, served and completed his service as a Naval officer for 7 yrs. Carter has worked since leaving office for world peace and human rights. Please don’t try to drag a person like that into the gutter with the likes of a party that has produced the likes of Calvin Cooledge, Herbert Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, Neil Bush, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Mark Foley, Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Jack abrahmoff, Karl Rove, Ron Zieglar, John Mitchell, Caspar Weinberger, John Haldeman, Oliver North, Gordon Libby and the hundreds of other crooked Republicans. As it was commented before me, there isn’t anough bandwidth to outline all the Republican scandals and rememeber, it’s the conservatives and Republicans who alledge to have the moral hhigh ground, nothing but hypercrites.

The country that you and the Bushies are trying to change the U.S. too is not the America that my father fought for in WWII. It’s more like the country that he fought against. You want a fascist theorcracy so I suggest you emigrate to Iran, it will be more to your liking. You won’t have to worry about dissenters, the “liberal press” or moral decline. You’ll need to do that if that is what you want, because it was liberals, progressive thinking, that founded this country and it’s been the middle and lower classes of this country who have fought the wars to preserve it and we are not about to allow a bunch of narrow-minded, greedy, bottom dwelling, authoritarian elitists chicken hawks steal our country. Do yourself a favor, read a book or newspaper now and again. The world goes through changes and tings don’t stay static, unlike a conservatives thought process.

“The Shah is our ally”. The Shah was YOUR ally. OBL was YOUR ally.
Saddam was YOUR ally. Karimov is YOUR ally. I get so sick of these
idiots saying their stupidity at the time was justified because someone
was supposedly “our” ally. Hey chump, “YOUR” ally.

What national security strategy formulator who loves America
wouldnt give all the tea in China to have Mossadegh back.
Its the same idiots, folks, stupid time and time again.

Carter Rulez!!!

From a distance (Australia) it is very interesting watching Americans go at each others throat :)

We just had the misfortune of a visit from your beloved VP and he managed to upset many people here without saying a word!

All he had to do was drive down the street of Sydney (one of our biggest cties for those that don’t study geography) and for this seemingly inocuous action, the authorities deemed it necessary to close most of the city AND the harbour bridge.

All so that one man can go around telling mistruths! Idon’t think so :(

Star wars? Certainly the greatest foreign policy initiative in American history; the fall of a monstrous communist empire which had enslaved millions of Eastern Europeans for decades and which had kept Kennedy, Johnson & Carter “shaking in their boots” during their administrations, without the firing of a single pistol shot? Yeah, I’d say that worked pretty well too.

Much better than peeing in your pants while two of our helicopters crashed together in Iran while you were trying to abort their mission. The sixty imprisoned & abused American soldiers in Iran that Carter did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help for 444 days probably wished “star wars” had come along sooner.

We could use more “trickle downing” & “star warring” & a whole lot less of Jimmy Carter’s heroism & economic guidance.

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize? Give me a damn break.

Where are teh Democrat ideas, so that they can be evaulatated? Oh there aren’t any.

Until you people start contributing to the solution, you have no right to criticize those who are trying.

You could skip everything else he’s posted.
This quote explains everything -
he belives trickle down and star wars worked.

“Do you happen to know where the $27 to $40 Billion currently un-accounted for has gone in Iraq?”

Maybe it’s in William Jefferson’s freezer?