Re: 649 — I appreciate those examples from across the Atlantic, but I guess you missed my repeated mentions of the United States and "American discourse."

You also said "Comedians don't mock Muslims for the same reasons newspapers don't print Muhammad cartoons." And I'm showing you why that's a dumb assertion.

Newspapers don't print Muhammad cartoons because it's a slightly pointless and directly offensive move that has little reward except to galvanise nutters and piss off moderate Muslims. (It's also 'been done, so it's just old news too.) Comedians do mock Muslims; they just don't mock things that aren't particularly mock-able, and for which there isn't really an audience to laugh at it.

No, they don't print such material because they're afraid of having their offices firebombed. "Piss Christ" and the like were also "slightly pointless and directly offensive," but that hasn't stopped media outlets from giving such works wide attention.

Re: 649 — I appreciate those examples from across the Atlantic, but I guess you missed my repeated mentions of the United States and "American discourse."

I guess I did. (You'd probably really like 'Four Lions', by the way.) So is it your stance that British and European comedians are much braver and freer than their US counterparts? Why do you think that is?

No, they don't print such material because they're afraid of having their offices firebombed.

Yes, galvanized nutters, which I think I addressed. But diminishing returns on that one, too.

"Piss Christ" and the like were also "slightly pointless and directly offensive," but that hasn't stopped media outlets from giving such works wide attention.

Is that the 'work of art' that was vandalized multiple times and which religious leaders have demanded the White House denounce? The one that was withdrawn from exhibition after fears that unrelated works would be vandalized? The one in which gallery officials received death threats?

Oh, but that was in Australia, so I guess it's not relevant. Carry on.

simply indisputable.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

627. The Yankee Clapper Posted: March 09, 2013 at 01:31 AM (#4384793)

The American people, in their infinite wisdom, disagree with the BBTF leftists who think Jimmy Carter was a good President

617. Steve Treder Posted: March 08, 2013 at 11:02 PM (#4384712)

[Carter] was also woefully unprepared to be POTUS in 1976... His presidency was far less than great.

Everything the CIA was saying about the USSR's economy in the 1970s was also true of Cuba's economy, North Korea's economy, etc. And yet somehow, Cuba, a former client state of the USSR, is still ruled by communists some 20-plus years after the Cold War was won, and North Korea is as communist as ever.

Seriously. It's like we have no idea those places are all... absolutely identical?


I'm sure a lot of liberals here are happy Rany bailed on the GOP, but that column wasn't one of Rany's finest efforts, and it seemed to lack any internal logic.

If you can't trust the logic of this man:

But anyway, Obama says Bush caused the financial crisis, so I guess we have to give Reagan credit for winning the Cold War.

Who can you trust?

I guess I did. (You'd probably really like 'Four Lions', by the way.)

I just added it to my watchlist at IMDb. Thanks for the recommendation.

So is it your stance that British and European comedians are much braver and freer than their US counterparts? Why do you think that is?

I don't know. I was under the impression that mocking or otherwise disparaging Islam in any way was both discouraged in Britain — as it is in Canada, where doing so can get one hauled before one of those hate-speech commissions — and risky/unwise. (Within the past week or two, I read about the recent attempted murder in Denmark of a prominent critic of Islam, which was the latest in a rather long list of such attacks. I'd assume the same risks exist in Britain, but perhaps not.)

***

Seriously. It's like we have no idea those places are all... absolutely identical? (Also, were you interning in the same CIA committee hearings Yankee Clapper was?)

Why would we need to have been interning on the CIA committee meetings? The various quotes above were from unclassified testimony from the timeframe in question (late 1970s). Unless Turner & Co. were lying to Congress, we know what the CIA was saying.

A physicist speaks at your funeral. Sounds kind of mystical, but there is a difference.

Much more comforting than the hooey offered by priests, imams, and ministers, and the physicist might also want to remember to note that under certain conditions we are likelier than not to be living in a simulation, meaning the departed is only in a "less orderly" state for a little while.

LBJ (what--almost 60K killed--and for what?)

Let's try to remember to include southeast Asians in the death toll.

edit: mefisto's post in 626 is a terrifically smart summary of Reagan's presidency. That Reagan is considered anything other than a disaster is a woeful commentary on the country.

I was under the impression that mocking or otherwise disparaging Islam in any way was both discouraged in Britain — as it is in Canada, where doing so can get one hauled before one of those hate-speech commissions — and risky/unwise.

There are, in fact, laws against incitement to racial and religious hatred in the UK, and they are occasionally enforced, which actually makes it technically more risky to criticise some groups than it is in the US. Frankie Boyle, who delights in material that deliberately sets out to offend, has often flirted with danger here.

But the average Brit probably has British Islam in their daily news far, far more often than the average American has American Islam in their daily news. (And international news coverage in the UK is probably more thorough than in the US, for a variety of reasons). So the material has an audience as well as a target. In fact, the top news story on BBC News online today is about the re-arrest of a radical Islamic cleric in the UK.

If US individuals are more worried about being targeted by radical Islam than UK individuals, perhaps it's related to the easier availability of deadly weaponry in the US?

He was in office when the Soviet state collapsed.

While I agree with your general sentiments, let's not forget that Reagan was not in office when the Soviet empire collapsed. Bush I was. The Soviets started glasnost and perestroika during Reagan's years, which hinted at the trouble they were in and their inability to tweak their way out of it but the collapse came after Reagan left office (I'm actually glad it waited a bit. Reagan was feeble-minded due to his Alzheimer's his second term. He really should have resigned for the good of the country.).

If you want to give credit for the collapse of the Soviet empire, you should give it to people like Truman and George Kennan and John McCloy, who were the ones who formulated and implemented the policy of containment.

The Reagan fellators never cease to astonish and fascinate me. Here's a guy that appeases terrorists and allows The US to be blackmailed by kidnapping his citizens, who got several hundred marines needlessly killed in Lebanon (Reagan has no effin' clue what the US was doing there, no appreciation of the complexity of the geopolitical complexity or what he hoped to accomplish. He just sent in the boys and thought he would steamroll the entire problem like it was Iwo Jima or something. What a moron.)

Getting back to Carter, the economic problems we had he inherited from previous administrations, the oil shock and the hangover from Vietnam. Neither was his doing. All the policies that got the country back on its feet in the 80's were his doing: the Alaska pipeline, oil industry de-regulation, appointment of Volcker (previously mentioned. I wish he had been fed chairman during the Bush II years. We would never have gotten that stupid tax cut) and investment in renewable technologies and conservation. Reagan foolishly rolled a lot of that back, symbolically removing the solar collectors from the White House as a great big FU to the environment and renewables industry.

So you are claiming that if the presidents of the 80's had been a reelected Carter and Mondale, generally maintaining Carter's foreign policy and defense budget, that the Soviet Union would have collapsed around the same time? I do not see it.

Well, this is a bizarre reading of history.

Why did the Soviet Union collapse then? You think it was an otherwise essentially stable structure that was de-stabilized by outside forces?

So then the Chernobyl disaster and Afghanistan adventure, the wasteful and ineffective 5-year plans, the restricted flow of information and the suspicions and dislike of their closest allies towards them were all manufactured by US policy.

That's a very interesting interpretation of history. It's a completely batshit one but interesting nonetheless.

Reagan can be faulted for reasons too many to count, but I do think he has to be given credit for recognizing when Gorbachev was being serious about easing US-Soviet tensions. Given the rhetoric and the pressure from the hardliners at the time, that was hardly a given. It was a rare opportunity, and to his credit, Reagan seized it.

But of course as Publius and others note, the real credit for the collapse of the Soviet empire, to the extent that it can be credited to external forces, has to go to the entire line of presidents from Truman through Reagan, however much they may have differed in their public rhetoric. You might attribute the absence of WWIII at many critical points to luck, but IMO the fact that we survived 40 years with two nuclear armed megapowers at each other's throats without a nuclear holocaust has to be credited at least in part to people who knew what they were doing.

And beyond that, you have to give credit to the amazing persistence of the dissidents within the empire, beginning with the first witnesses in the 1920's all the way up through the East Germans, the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Solidarity movement, and writers from Jerzy Gliksman to Solzhenitsyn. It wasn't just pressure from without that was responsible for the empire's collapse.

If you want to give credit for the collapse of the Soviet empire, you should give it to people like Truman and George Kennan and John McCloy

And (as you'd most likely agree, I know, Publius) you should give credit much more so to Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Németh Miklós, and Egon Krenz (the latter two served briefly as interim heads of government in Hungary and in the DDR in 1989-90). And to Gorbachev himself, naturally. All of these people came of age during an era (1956-67) when, if a satellite state thumbed its nose at the USSR, the tanks rolled in. All of them had the vision to realize that the tank-rolling wasn't inevitable.

And speaking of tanks, Tank Man. It seems romantic to say that one man, one image, can change the world, but a key reason the tanks didn't roll in Europe in '89 was that they had rolled in China, and that guy stood in front of them.

There were lots and lots of US leaders during the Cold War who took admirable stands on democracy and human rights, but the idea that the West somehow built some huge weapons, made some exciting speeches, and thus freed the world, is not really tenable in the long view.

Much as I despised Ronald Reagan, I would give him credit for working to make his idealism about disarmament concrete, with the Reykjavík meetings being the best example. And 41 deserves enormous credit for what he was mocked about in 1989-91: "prudence" in the face of a volatile situation.

But the Soviet empire was brought down thanks to the people who lived in it and found ways to dismantle it.

EDIT: Damn, Andy, you type fast, but great minds think alike and buy each other Cokes :)

661 and 662 are closer to the type of response I expected and can accept. Credit to many, but Reagan taking crucial action that was by no means inevitable.

Edit: one more question: if Reagan caused the collapse of the USSR, did Bush cause the 2008 financial crisis?

Admitting and recognizing that neither were 100% responsible, yes.

What a delightful flurry of name calling. Sigh.

And (as you'd most likely agree, I know, Publius) you should give credit much more so to Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Németh Miklós, and Egon Krenz (the latter two served briefly as interim heads of government in Hungary and in the DDR in 1989-90).

I certainly concur with this.

The latest on 3D printing and the human body:

Human Ear Created With 3D Printer

Researchers have constructed a living human ear that looks and feels just like the real thing, and they made it with the help of a 3D printer. The new ear improves upon prosthetic ears made by current methods which are not only unlifelike, but often uncomfortable to wear and even painful. Better yet, at most the ear takes only a week to make.

The ear wasn’t 3D printed with “living ink” – researchers still have a way to go before tissue even as simple as an ear can be fabricated de novo. For their ear, the researchers and clinicians at Cornell used a 3D printer to make a precise ear mold. Serving as medical models, the ears of two twin sisters were laser scanned and photographed with a high-definition camera to create a digitized 3D image – a process which took just 30 seconds. The image was then used to fabricate a mold with a Stratasys FDM 2000 3D printer. They then injected a gel containing collagen derived from animals into the ear mold and followed that by injecting 250 million cartilage cells. The collagen, a structural protein found normally in cells, acted as a scaffold on which the cartilage cells grew. In just fifteen minutes the ear was ready. They removed it, shaped it further with trimming, then placed it in a cell culture medium for three to five days before implanting it.

The entire process from scan to implantation is about a week. Then, for the next three months the attached ear grew cartilage to replace the collagen until, eventually, only cartilage existed, just like a normal ear. The final product is an ear that looks and feels like the real thing – the best to date in appearing and functioning like a real ear, according to a Cornell University press release.

Much as I despised Ronald Reagan, I would give him credit for working to make his idealism about disarmament concrete, with the Reykjavík meetings being the best example. And 41 deserves enormous credit for what he was mocked about in 1989-91: "prudence" in the face of a volatile situation.

Well, to be truthful about it, disarmament was Reagan's fallback position. Remember his massive nuke buildup, and his ridiculous "Star Wars" program? He resorted to the liberal position of negotiated reductions only after the NATO allies in Europe voiced alarm (especially Germany, which interpreted his policy as a willingness by the US, in the event of a conflict, to resort to nukes early and fight on the ground to the last German) and Star Wars proved to be a fantasy. That, and having a willing partner in Gorbachov. None of the preceding presidents had that kind of luck.

Good point, Publius. I despised the man for his saber-rattling, which could be inconceivably irresponsible ("We begin bombing in five minutes," hahaha), but have to give him credit for altering course, too.

Carter was so so as a President. One reason he does not get backing from liberals is that he wasn't really Liberal. He was from the more conservative wing of the Democratic party (there is a reason he had to fight off Kennedy in the Primary).

Since he did not have the support of the Democrats and was largely an outsider he didn't have much support when he was President and so was very ineffectual.

Brilliant man though and a great person (as he has shown post-presidency), but not a great president.

(and 664 is a report from last night, wtf?)

Credit to many, but Reagan taking crucial action that was by no means inevitable.

Well, that's where we disagree then. Nothing Reagan did was crucial. Historians are uniform in opining that the Soviet Union collapsed because of internal weaknesses.

Getting back to the CIA's failure to predict the Soviet collapse. In fact, there were a great many analysts in the CIA who were predicting just this thing (as noted above) during the Reagan years, and were advocating just sitting tight as the rot deepened to an untenable level. But these analysts were marginalized as being "soft on Communism" and their advice was ignored, even derisively ignored by some. Al Haig in particular was one.

Think of all the money that could have been saved and invested more wisely had they been listened to.

By that standard, you must really have a problem with Obama.

No, different circumstances. In Obama's case the deficits were caused by Bush Jr.'s policies which spilled over (2 wars, Medicare Part D, tax cuts). In Reagan's case, Carter had kept the debt low and Reagan's policies alone increased it.

I forgot to mention Reagan's worst sin: he set in motion the policies that have led to the US having far greater income inequality and far less social mobility than most developed nations. In 1980 the US had a thriving middle class and the chance to rise. That's far less true today, and Reagan is substantially (though not entirely) to blame.

he set in motion the policies that have led to the US having far greater income inequality and far less social mobility than most developed nations.

This is certainly true, to Reagan's everlasting infamy.

By that standard, you must really have a problem with Obama.

No, different circumstances. In Obama's case the deficits were caused by Bush Jr.'s policies which spilled over (2 wars, Medicare Part D, tax cuts). In Reagan's case, Carter had kept the debt low and Reagan's policies alone increased it.

We're seeing an interesting economic ju-jitsu with regard to the deficit. Reagan's crazed military build-up helped accomplish his aim of slowing social spending by creating an unsustainable overall increase in government spending. Obama is doing something of the reverse, increasing spending on social programs to the point where we finally have to curb defense spending in order to address the deficit (along with finally grasping that our unnecessary wars are unaffordable).

Driving the deficit higher is an interesting if inefficient way to take aim at programs you want to cut.

he set in motion the policies that have led to the US having far greater income inequality and far less social mobility than most developed nations.


This is certainly true, to Reagan's everlasting infamy.

I have friends who fawn over Reagan's memory but who are unable to make the connection between his policies and the simple fact that both the husband and wife are skilled workers each making under ten dollars an hour in 'right to work' states.

Driving the deficit higher is an interesting if inefficient way to take aim at programs you want to cut.

I don't like it though, whether by Reagan or Obama. It smacks of political cowardice to me.

I don't think Obama is doing this, BTW. He ran on a policy of raising taxes to curb the deficits, and he was reelected even though he said straight out he was going to raise them. So I give him credit for that.

Sigh

I have friends who fawn over Reagan's memory but who are unable to make the connection between his policies and the simple fact that both the husband and wife are skilled workers each making under ten dollars an hour in 'right to work' states.

Along with them you had the cottage industry of people who couldn't find enough praise words for the Polish Solidarity movement over there, while at the same time doing everything within their power to destroy unions here in the U. S. When used by Lech Walesa, "Solidarity" was practically on the level of "derivatives" in their pantheon of dictionary deities, but the second anyone used that word over here, it was "What are you, some kind of a Commie?"

Yeah, I doubt in Obama's case it's at all part of some overarching strategy; just a willingness to accept higher deficits in order to get health care to more folks, and if that encourages us to cut defense spending, that's just a happy coincidence. The downside is that it forces us to consider things like raising the retirement age for people doing physical work into their mid60s.

Too bad we're still not getting it, though. The top rate should be at least in the low 40s, and probably around 45%

@676: one of the stranger phenomena of that era.

@676: one of the stranger phenomena of that era.

Yet, not so strange, when you begin to study the mentality of the people who voice them.

I forgot to mention, Wild Bill Casey was instrumental in marginalizing anyone in the CIA who voiced an opinion that the Soviet Empire was anything but a rolling juggernaut that had to be stopped at all costs by even greater force. And this legacy lived on as well, in missing the Soviet collapse, then later supinely supplying the fasle documentation of Iraqi WMD's.

The right's hatred for empiricism, rationalism and objectivism just doesn't pertain to science.

@676: one of the stranger phenomena of that era.

But surely one of the more predictable.

Limiting the discussion solely to political skill rather than policy, comparing Carter to Obama does at least provide a demonstration of the difference between a talented politician and a less talented one. Both guys inherited crapass situations, and both had trouble getting things done early in their administrations due to inexperience and an overly idealistic approach. But Obama was able to turn it around and get re-elected, while Carter was not.

Egon Krenz doesn't deserve any credit for the end of the Cold War. The extent of his leadership was the recognition that the DDR government had collapsed by the Fall of 1989, and that even if he had ordered a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown (which he lauded in 1989 BTW), it wouldn't have saved his regime. The German Volk ran over him like a bump in the road.

@680, rereading wikipedia on the 1980 Prez election brought back some unhappy memories. Reagan making hay out of Carter's foolish refusal to include John Anderson in the debates before giving in a week before the election and debating with just Carter. Reagan led by only 2-3 points in late October, but was thought to have pounded Carter in the debate. It was 'there you go again', and 'I really don't remember saying that...' Carter was widely seen as weak, if not incompetent, and got killed for talking about asking his then 12 year old daughter Amy was she thought the most important issue in the election was.

It was 'there you go again', and 'I really don't remember saying that...' Carter was widely seen as weak, if not incompetent, and got killed for talking about asking his then 12 year old daughter Amy was she thought the most important issue in the election was.

That bit about Amy had to have been one of the biggest debate disasters of all time, up there with Gerald Ford's theories about independent satellite states and Michael Dukakis's response to Bernard Shaw's question about rape. I remember on the MNF game right after the election, the Cowboys were shredding the St. Louis Cardinals' secondary with repeated long passes. Roger Staubach was doing the color commentary that night, and he said "the Cardinals' secondary has the same problem as Amy Carter. They're afraid of the bomb."

You cannot really credit Clinton with the 90s economy for the same reason you cannot credit Reagan with the USSRs collapse. At least you have to pin some of the 21st century economic problems on him, what with NAFTA and deregulation.

Al Gore in the other hand DID fund the internet...

Good point, Publius. I despised the man for his saber-rattling, which could be inconceivably irresponsible ("We begin bombing in five minutes," hahaha), but have to give him credit for altering course, too.

You've got to be kidding.

***

No, different circumstances. In Obama's case the deficits were caused by Bush Jr.'s policies which spilled over (2 wars, Medicare Part D, tax cuts). In Reagan's case, Carter had kept the debt low and Reagan's policies alone increased it.

Gee, didn't see that coming.

I forgot to mention Reagan's worst sin: he set in motion the policies that have led to the US having far greater income inequality and far less social mobility than most developed nations. In 1980 the US had a thriving middle class and the chance to rise. That's far less true today, and Reagan is substantially (though not entirely) to blame.

But let me guess: You support Obama's calls for amnesty and additional low-skilled immigration, right?

Ricky Gervais on Muslims afteer 9/11 might be germane to this conversation. A bit of introspection about how wanting to be true to his liberal principles and irrational fear play off one another.

A discussion of the collapse of the Soviet Union has to include the 1985 crash in oil prices and the Soviet Union's inability to raise money from foreign banks in the late 1980s. The nation's finances fell exactly as it became less able to borrow money on foreign markets. That isn't the only reason but is surely a major reason for the regime's collapse.

On Carter: Let me add to the leftist chorus that says he was generally a pretty bad president. He drove working-class whites out of the party by deliberately trashing unions whenever he could. People forget that union members voted for Reagan in part because they genuinely believed the Democrats had abandoned unions and Reagan had led them to believe he would be more sympathetic to them. Turned out wrong, but they weren't crazy. Carter ran as an anti-union candidate in the primaries, and governed like one. The collapse of steel had long roots but some of it was due to Carter's willingness to trade away jobs in sweetheart deals with other countries. A fair reading of our current economic inequality has to lay some of the blame not just on Reagan but on Carter as well.

The difference between the Soviet Union and Cuban economic crises is that the Soviet Union's world position depended upon it being able to send money or run imbalances with client states. Once it couldn't do that, the client states either tottered or made deals with internal dissidents, since they couldn't sustain themselves. Cuba and North Korea face a different problem which is can they survive if their economy causes their inhabitants to suffer.

The Soviet Union's problems in financing its client states went back quite a ways. One of the main reasons Sadat turned toward the US was because the Soviet Union was charging him exorbitant rates for the privilege of having their troops in Egypt. When he couldn't pay that, he de-aligned from the USSR to save money and then eventually sought the US. But those longstanding financial challenges to maintaining client states magnified and reached the inner core of clients after the 1985 crash and the 1989 denial of foreign loans.

Despite our disagreements, I am finding this to be interesting reading. I like to consider myself to be the type of person that is open to different perspectives and changing my opinions in the face of new information. Based on what has been said here, I can buy the hypothesis that the Soviet Union MIGHT have collapsed without Reagan's actions (before yesterday, I wouldn't have considered that possibility). But my biggest obstacle to going further than that is: if the collapse was imminent (as opposed to simply possible), why weren't congressional Democrats arguing against the defense buildup using that argument (it's not necessary, USSR will collapse soon, just stay out of their way). Of course, many of them argued against it because it increased the debt and/or curtailed domestic spending, but that is not the same thing.

Despite our disagreements, I am finding this to be interesting reading. I like to consider myself to be the type of person that is open to different perspectives and changing my opinions in the face of new information. Based on what has been said here, I can buy the hypothesis that the Soviet Union MIGHT have collapsed without Reagan's actions (before yesterday, I wouldn't have considered that possibility). But my biggest obstacle to going further than that is: if the collapse was imminent (as opposed to simply possible), why weren't congressional Democrats arguing against the defense buildup using that argument (it's not necessary, USSR will collapse soon, just stay out of their way). Of course, many of them argued against it because it increased the debt and/or curtailed domestic spending, but that is not the same thing.

I think that's a good question. Some congressional Dems did argue against the build up, and Dems argued strongly against certain particular programs. But in the big picture, you're right. in the 1980s most Democrats were Cold War Democrats.

I don't think that though speaks to the question of why the Soviet Union collapsed. Both sides of the US party system might have misread the state of things. Most Democrats also believed the Soviet Union was thriving. Both parties can believe something that doesn't turn out to be true.

Thinking about the Soviet Union's collapse depends, I think, upon thinking about its internal issues. Its economic planning limited its growth in ways that became apparent. Its international goals created enormous demands upon it. The US played a role in shaping both aspects, as the US' growth in the 1950s-1980s made the USSR look uncompetitive, something that didn't seem inherently true in the 1930s. And the US' own international agenda put pressure on the Soviets to back client regimes.

Nevertheless, the USSR survived these critical problems for decades; the outlines were apparent decades before the 1980s, which is why some analysts thought they were always going to fall. Some Sovietologists thought in 1984 that the Soviets were entering a newly powerful moment.

What changed dramatically was the bottoming out of oil (which they had survived before but which proved a major hit upon an economy that was and remains too oil-driven) and then, crucially, the withdrawal of foreign loans in 89. They got something like 20% of what they asked for in 89 and were told that additional loans would require political backing from western nations before banks would extend them. Without the capacity to borrow, they faced collapse. Needing Western political support for additional loans, and lacking oil revenues, they had to accede to changes in Poland and West Germany. (Had activists there not been pushing from inside, the crises might not have arisen.) If you look at Soviet trade agreements and support of client states, you can see that as the thing that is wearing them out, more so than weapons expenditures, and the area where they have to withdraw.

I give Reagan credit for a major big thing. Fate gave him an opportunity when Gorby came to power, and Reagan to his credit took it. It looks obvious in retrospect but wasn't obvious at the time. Another president might not have, and we would be worse off for that.

But my biggest obstacle to going further than that is: if the collapse was imminent (as opposed to simply possible), why weren't congressional Democrats arguing against the defense buildup using that argument (it's not necessary, USSR will collapse soon, just stay out of their way). Of course, many of them argued against it because it increased the debt and/or curtailed domestic spending, but that is not the same thing.

It goes back to Vietnam. Democrats were seen as the hippie party. The natural balance of power is that the voting public trusts Republicans more on foreign policy and Democrats more on domestic policy/entitlements. Being against military build-up in the 1980s was incredibly unpopular. I don't know if you noticed, but being soft on Communism is not a thing you want attached to your record.

The same dynamic is what led to the bipartisan support for Iraq.

Drones in today's NY Times:

One morning in late September 2011, a group of American drones took off from an airstrip the C.I.A. had built in the remote southern expanse of Saudi Arabia. The drones crossed the border into Yemen, and were soon hovering over a group of trucks clustered in a desert patch of Jawf Province, a region of the impoverished country once renowned for breeding Arabian horses.A group of men who had just finished breakfast scrambled to get to their trucks. One was Anwar al-Awlaki, the firebrand preacher, born in New Mexico, who had evolved from a peddler of Internet hatred to a senior operative in Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen. Another was Samir Khan, another American citizen who had moved to Yemen from North Carolina and was the creative force behind Inspire, the militant group's English-language Internet magazine.

Two of the Predator drones pointed lasers on the trucks to pinpoint the targets, while the larger Reapers took aim. The Reaper pilots, operating their planes from thousands of miles away, readied for the missile, and fired.

It was the culmination of years of painstaking intelligence work, intense deliberation by lawyers working for President Obama and turf fights between the Pentagon and the C.I.A., whose parallel drone wars converged on the killing grounds of Yemen. For what was apparently the first time since the Civil War, the United States government had carried out the deliberate killing of an American citizen as a wartime enemy and without a trial. [...]

As Mr. Awlaki had become one of the world's most hunted terrorists, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman had lived the life of a normal adolescent. He liked sports and music and kept his Facebook page regularly updated. But now he sneaked out of the family home in Sana, Yemen's capital, leaving an apologetic note for his mother saying that he had gone to find his father.

But by the time the teenager headed to Shabwa, his father had left for Jawf Province, hundreds of miles away. [...]

Then, on Oct. 14, a missile apparently intended for an Egyptian Qaeda operative, Ibrahim al-Banna, hit a modest outdoor eating place in Shabwa. The intelligence was bad: Mr. Banna was not there, and among about a dozen men killed was the young Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who had no connection to terrorism and would never have been deliberately targeted.It was a tragic error and, for the Obama administration, a public relations disaster, further muddying the moral clarity of the previous strike on his father and fueling skepticism about American assertions of drones' surgical precision. The damage was only compounded when anonymous officials at first gave the younger Mr. Awlaki's age as 21, prompting his grieving family to make public his birth certificate.He had been born in Denver, said the certificate from the Colorado health department. In the United States, at the time his government's missile killed him, the teenager would have just reached driving age. [Emphasis added]

Www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/world/middleeast/anwar-al-awlaki-a-us-citizen-in-americas-cross-hairs.html

Just to head-off at the pass the sure to ensue "Carter was against Zionism, not Jews blah blah blah".

Turns out I'm an anti-Zionist and a Jew. What do you make of that?

But my biggest obstacle to going further than that is: if the collapse was imminent (as opposed to simply possible), why weren't congressional Democrats arguing against the defense buildup using that argument (it's not necessary, USSR will collapse soon, just stay out of their way).

There were people making that argument, most notably George Kennan (simplified somewhat), but you're right that most Dems weren't. I think it goes back even further than Vietnam, all the way to Nixon, McCarthy, and HUAC in the late '40s. The Republicans demogogued the issue and the Dems (to their own discredit) caved. That set a political climate which got worse with Vietnam and alternative voices were frozen out of the political discourse.

Turns out I'm an anti-Zionist and a Jew. What do you make of that?

That self-hatred amongst Jews is fairly common?

On Carter: Let me add to the leftist chorus that says he was generally a pretty bad president

I didn't know what to make of Carter while he was President, and am not much further along after studying his Presidency some over the intervening years. While avoiding psychological explanations, I'd say that his public profile was one of someone who would tackle an issue with abundant problem-solving intelligence and great patience, but had a hard time setting priorities. He spent enormous effort and political capital on the Panama Canal, which was a major issue in Panama, somewhat less so everywhere else in the world. He was truly on a mission about Middle East peace, and achieved great things there; so, again, credit where due. Meanwhile Carter completely failed to work with Congress on health-care legislation, at a time when a solidly Democratic and fairly leftish Congress could have delivered something far more progressive than Obamacare, 30+ years earlier.

As others have said above, Carter just wasn't very liberal, and that hampered his ability to lead – his own party distrusted him because he was conservative, and the other party distrusted him because he was a Democrat. Many of the policies that would come to be associated with Reagan began under Carter, particularly deregulation (airline deregulation was a Carter-era initiative, for instance).

I never voted for Carter, though I probably would have with reluctance in 1976 (I was, barely, not old enough to vote then), and I would have, again reluctantly, in 1980 (when I was turned away at the polls on a registration technicality). I voted for Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic primary. There are things to admire about Carter's work and life as a whole – in some ways he presents interesting parallels to Herbert Hoover, another humanitarian not really suited to the Presidency. I intend to stay in Plains later this month and visit some Carter-related sights – I never miss a chance to do some Presidential tourism :)

But my biggest obstacle to going further than that is: if the collapse was imminent (as opposed to simply possible), why weren't congressional Democrats arguing against the defense buildup using that argument (it's not necessary, USSR will collapse soon, just stay out of their way).

Many intellectuals and analysts on the left were arguing that, not just in this country but in the other NATO countries as well. Throughout the seventies, this country generally pursued a policy of detente with the communist world. Both parties were equally interested in peaceful coexistence and were willing to make compromises to keep the peace. It was Reagan, and the militant right, who said "No!" to that. What provided them (the Reaganites) a big boost was the Afghanistan coup and the suppression of the Polish labor unions by the Soviet client Wojciech Jaruzelski, who forged documents that suggested Solidarity was planning a coup and used them as an excuse to impose martial law. After these two events, it was hard to argue against passive opposition. There were a few Democrats who did but mostly they remained quiet.

The military coup in Poland and the Afghanistan invasion should have been interpreted as a sign of weakness, not strength, but Reagan's administration was too filled with macho patriotism to bother considering a more deft and subtle course.

What caused me to stop fearing the Soviets was reading Breaking with Moscow by Arkady Shevchenko, in the early 80's. After reading it, one cannot escape the idea that the Soviet Empire was a house of cards about to collapse. But, again, the more perceptive and objective foreign policy analysts were swept aside by Reagan and his jingoistic cohorts.

There's a lesson to be learned there. One of those lessons is "Never conduct your foreign policy by stoking the fears and prejudices of the electorate.". The Reagan administration did that in spades, again to his everlasting infamy. He even tried to co-opt Bruce Springsteen's popularity to stoke jingoism. Springsteen was a working class Democrat if there ever was one and he admirably slapped Reagan down. None of this sucking up to the powers that be for Springsteen. No sir. He has always been true to his artistic principles, and it is one of the reasons people like him so much.

@696: "... not suited to the Presidency" sounds right to me. I would, though, benefit from studying his strengths and weaknesses as a Governor before making more certain claims.

One thing, not worth much at all, that I remember about Carter were reports that he regularly micromanaged pretty much anything. The color of the Easter eggs at the White House hunts, the wattage in bulbs used there; it seemed a frequent occurrence, and counterproductive.

Does that fit other peoples' memories?

For what was apparently the first time since the Civil War, the United States government had carried out the deliberate killing of an American citizen as a wartime enemy and without a trial. [...]

Not quite right. There were a number of folks with American citizenship who fought for the Axis in WWII. They didn't get any special protections.

Flip