I don't want to workFollow

I've spent the last hour dodging my boss and playing the d3 beta. Yeah, I'm in that boat.

I love History so I'd probably find that enjoyable, regardless of the content.

I love history, but not in this form. I love dealing with historical analyses, but this is just facts and dates that I'm expected to regurgitate on the exam. Plus, I hate Reagan and Nixon, so memorizing all the **** they did really isn't that fun.

I always found the Nixon era to be a pretty fascinating stretch of years, a little before and a little after. The world changed a lot.

I don't want to work either.

Luckily, I don't have to for almost two weeks.

Most of the test was Reaganomics and Medicare.

Was easy, but SO NOT INTERESTING.

I've been not wanting to work for 6 months now. I'm pretty ******* bored. But now I can't find work.

My boss is out; I've been reading a book under my desk in case anyone walks by

Still need to finish up an article for ZAM later today though

[EDIT]
Oh god wall of text. I started typing a reply to avoid cleaning and then this happened.

TLDR; Kennedy was largely useless and did little, willingly, for our economy, foreign affairs, or civil rights.
Nixon was a pragmatist, and they make terrible presidents. He only ran on popular issues, which crippled the economy and made legislation like a puzzle with all the pieces coming from different sets.
Ford was useless, but that's to be expected of a president no one elected and who was handed a fragmented nation.
Carter was also useless, but that's because he was trying to make necessary, but unpopular, changes. His own unwise cabinet choices also helped lead to his defeat.
Reagan was a nasty piece of work. His economic policy set the stage for our present crisis, and Reaganomics were a joke even then. He blew up our deficit, slashed government revenue, and vastly increased the disparity between rich and poor.[/EDIT]

Yeah, Kennedy was largely a joke. He failed to do anything with the Economy, and had to be pretty much forced into making any civil rights legislation, for fear of further alienating the Southern Democrats. Even the President's Commission on Women was a result of pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt. Unsurprisingly, considering his personal views on women, he couldn't give a crap.

The only thing I'm willing to credit him with is the way he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis. But everything else is largely neutral or pretty bad (such as the Bay of Pigs invasion).

Nixon was a joke. He left the economy in shambles. It wasn't great coming out of Kennedy's years (inflation was the highest it had been in a long time), but it wasn't awful either (primarily because unemployment was low). But Nixon was a toothless git and all of his legislation was based on what would give him high ratings. The result was that nothing ever coordinated well in practice. For example, he established the EPA because of wide-spread support for DDT's repeal. But he never did jack about even more pressing environmental issues.

How extensively he was lying to the public is also a serious issue. He was a nasty piece of work in private, to be sure, but that wouldn't have been a problem if his politics weren't affected by it. But the extent to which he was lying to the American public and Congress about the Cold War (and, more importantly, Vietnam) was a serious, serious issue. Honestly, Watergate's cover-up was one of the least important aspects of the whole ordeal.

By the end of his presidency, inflation had gone higher and unemployment had increased a lot, leading to stagflation.

Ford was, unsurprisingly, useless. You can't really blame him, though. He was handed a pile of crap and had absolutely no public support (though pardoning Nixon didn't help).

Carter wasn't much better, but he did actually try to tackle tough issues (most of which were even larger for him, because Nixon either made them worse or did nothing). But he didn't have much popular support, and he made some really bad choices for his cabinet. I'll credit him with the fact that he wanted to do good and didn't make things worse, but he definitely wasn't a good president.

Then comes Reagan. I completely disagree that he was the president we needed. He completely ignored, and did his best to invalidate the voices of, all the counterculture movements of the previous two decades. And, to be blunt, they were far from being unjustified. His economic policy was, and has always been, a pile of crap. For all of his talk of getting away from an interventionist government, to a small system with low taxes and low regulations, he had to put in a Keynesian policy in his later years precisely to try and stem the recession he was causing. For all his talk against interventionist governments, he had to try and do precisely that when the economy failed under his brilliant plan. And we are still suffering from the changes he made--Americans are more adverse to intervention and taxes than ever, and they hold up the free market he idolized. But the truth is that he proved that none of those things were healthy for an economy.

Reagan did nothing but make the rich richer--he expected an economic boom with his policies, and he found they did nothing but lead to a stagnant market.

Even worse? He refused to do anything to stop outsourcing. Most of America's major economic problems go straight back to this period, where businesses really started to flee the US en masse. Reagan refused to pass any legislation stopping it, because he didn't want to get involved with the market.

Not to mention the fact that spending was the highest with him than ever before, because of his massive defense budget. And he had no problems tossing tax payer money to research problems that had zero probability of success (ballistic-missile defenses). When he left office, the deficit was higher than it had ever been, because his spending was massive and he wasn't generating any revenue to take care of it.

I could go on, but I'll stop there. The only thing I can really respect Reagan on is his appointment of Sandra Day O' Conner, who I don't even like. But her appointment when against his Moral Majority supporter's wishes, and (although conservative), she's at least not a puppet to ideology--she always approached every issue on a case-by-case policy, and never voted in favor of civil injustices.

Though, in the end, he doesn't even hold a candle to how much I hate Newt Gingrich, so meh.

Edited, Dec 23rd 2011 12:02pm by idiggory

#facepalm

I'm sorry but on no occaision has obama been as bad as this:



I'd be willing to perhaps allow you to argue some sort of twisted equivalency between the other two and obama is even remotely plausible, but Perry is like GWD on diet of paint chips.

I'm also really sick of hearing the wailing about Obama on both sides of the spectrum.

His campaign set him up to dissapoint everyone who he didn't enrage for becoming president in a country where a lot of people still only think old white men should be president (not saying their racists, but...) - lets be honest here, however, as far as American presidents go, he hasn't been arguably worse than any of them.

The recession and America/the world's debt problems are nothing more than the flowering of twisted ideas of commerce, banking, interest/usury, etc. that continue to proliferate and are not seriously challenged by even the most radical and unelectable candidates for political office that one ever hears of. Obama just happened to preside over the steaming shat pile that splurted from the **** of advanced techno-capitalism. I'm sure Hoover was just as unfortunate.

Aren't "market corrections" fun?

As it relates to my opinon, the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, gives him some credit. I'm far more left wing that anything that gets elected in America, so I'm not particulary enthused by his record - but I did actually shed a tear when he got elected. It was a powerful moment, regardless of the fact that probably everyone in the room with me at the time (it was a bunch of politicos who are also left of Obama) knew on some level or another, that the change in the pictures and commercials was more heart-rending promise than truth. (As it always is?)

But Obama's campaign really ffed him over because it created the kind of adulation and exaultation that could never be satisfied in real life. If he gets reelected, it will more because of ineptitude of the pubbies than any satisfaction that progressive Americans feel in his performance. If he loses, it will be more because he created unrealistic expectations than because his actions were inadequate.

It's fair to compare Obama to Romney. Comparing him to Perry insults Obama's intellect, and comparing him to Gingrich insults his demeanor.

^^