Free Republic

It wasn’t Washington and it wasn’t FDR either.

I would say the greatest was Jefferson and although they were not the greatest Wilson and Andrew Johnson certainly deserve a mention. Wilson because he finally forced Yankees to bury the bloody shirt and reconcile with us and Johnson because he risked everything defending us against the Yankees who tried all sorts of schemes on us during Reconstruction.

He of course forgot to mention that scalpers snapped up the damned tickets in the first 5 minutes and are now ripping people off.

Lincoln is nowhere near being one of the best presidents and people only think of him as such due to propaganda that paints him as some kind of hero when he was really the biggest destructor of liberty ever.

I’ve never really liked Jindal. I’ve always thought him to be something of a phony and I’m still not convinced that he’s not a closet Hindu.

Having said that, Jindal’s stock in my eyes has skyrocketed during this spill while Barbour’s has begun to drop.

We need a Southern alternative to keep Huckabee from being the Southern candidate. Jindal might could do it if he can get traction in the cities.

Jo Bonner and Jeff Miller are not “RINOS.” Jo Bonner and Jeff Miller represent two districts that are ground zero for this oil spill and are doing exactly what their constituents expect of them.

It’s not a shakedown. I don’t think you could find a court in any of the counties/parishes adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico where this spill is happening that would not find BP guilty of criminal negligence.

They had over 700 write-ups over a short period of time while most of their competitors combined didn’t even top 35. It was well known that they were an outlier in the industry. They knew that Deepwater would be a problem in February and decided to not tell anyone because it would have blown a hole in their whole “responsible green company” BS.

If I were on a jury I’d vote guilty for criminal negligence. Of course, I’m from the area actually getting affected by the spill and so my bias makes me nowhere near as qualified to speak on it as someone out in Montana who won’t be affected at all. Right?

I actually don’t. What I do have a case of is living on a bayou that emptys into a bay that emptys into the Gulf of Mexico in a city where the mayor is trying to formulate a plan for our own oil control to keep it from getting up to the city because the feds and BP are doing nothing.

Let me explain to you what happens if this is not controlled and this thing continues spewing forever. In a best case scenario the economic ramfications will lead to a 50% population loss. That’s best case. You’re talking about anywhere from several million people to up to almost 10,000,000 people who will have to abandon their homes and everything else because they’ll no longer be able to live here.

If you don’t think that the almost immediate dispersement and lost of assets of such a large population won’t have devastating effects on the whole country and especially on the Gulf states then you have never studied history.

I hope you realize anyone who stands with Barton writes off any chance they have of winning the primaries in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida, three of which represent some of the most conservative electorates in the country.

I’ve already seen it here in Alabama. Our Attorney General who was not very popular in our area at all ran TV ads tying his challenger to BP and the oil spill and actually ended up running better in the county then statewide, and his strongest vote was in those precincts that were closest to the Bay and the Gulf.

This thing has the potential to remake politics down here forever. Until Barton opened his mouth this was the gift that was going to give forever because people blamed BP and Obama and Democrat politicians. Barton hurt our cause by providing a Republican face supportive of BP thereby nullifying some of the partisan advantage we were picking up against Obama.

I kind of doubt that. Obama is a moron and shouldn’t have won in 2008 but this thing is such a pressure cooker that if people down here ever thought that such a thing might even possibly be happening the response would be so deafening that he’d back down in quick order.

Jeff Miller is one of the most far right members of Congress. Jeff Miller called for Joe Barton’s head. Barton represents Pensacola. Under normal circumstances someone like Miller probably wouldn’t go along with this fund but his abject political survival is at stake and he knows it.

It is in the best interests of the country as a whole as especially of Southerners who live in the cities along I-20 that those of us down here on the coast remain in place, are able to continue living down here, that it does get cleaned up and that we are able to return back to exactly the way things were in the next few years.

I’m not convinced this helps Palin. I do know that the perception is going to start to hurt Barbour as he keeps this up because he’s represented a dramatic departure from Jindal, Riley, and congressional leaders like Bonner and Miller.

Limbaugh will probably lose some listeners in our area. Take that for what you will.

I don’t think people who don’t have the gun of this spill cocked directly at them and their way of life realize just how scarring an event this is already been.

We’re not just talking about beach cleanup here. We are talking about the very possible destruction of a way of life that has existed for 300 years and a situation which, if we never recover from it, will probably force the lions share of people down here to leave and never come back, a transition of the population not seen since the Great Migration of the blacks 100 years ago.

That’s why if you’re not from the part of the world that’s dealing with the first hand you really have no business commenting on it because you don’t realize what’s at stake.

When you say this is “Carter’s second term” you give Obama far too much credit and you don’t get how much trouble we’re in.

Obama is Hoover’s 2nd term.

For a city with the population of New York 4 murders in a night is not really that high of a murder rate. If New York had 4 murders a day every day this year it would still have a lower per capita homicide rate than the city I live in.

I alluded to that somewhere when I mentioned him not backing the Shah.

If the Shah had stayed in power the hostages would not have been taken and there would not have been ribbons on trees across the country.

That was his big foreign policy mistake and if you’ve ever ready anything about it you know that there was a fierce debate during the Iranian Revolution of whether or not to push for a military crackdown or to push the Shah aside and try to work with the revolutionaries. Brezinski wanted the crackdown. Vance wanted the Shah to step aside. Vance won.

If Brezinski had prevailed the hostages wouldn’t have been taken and we would be inhabiting a far different world today.

No, BP should actually pay for any negative economic consequences that occur because of their corporate negligence.

It was willful negligence. They constantly have safety violations. They apparently knew this could happen in February but warned no one. They have been a bad actor throughout this entire thing using PR spin doctors rather than being honest.

I don’t want BP out of business. Far from it. I want them kept alive with a form of wage garnishment on top of it for the privilege of doing business here. If it’s good enough for deadbeat parents, debtors, and ex-cons paying their debts to society why shouldn’t it be good enough for BP?

No but we’ve been pissed off majorly now twice in the last five years.

You’ve mentioned a whole bunch of things that are unpopular with the American people. They were political victories but political victories only and he completely squandered all his political capital in doing them. I wouldn’t qualify them as having accomplished something.

Obama has not had one positive political achievement that people support or that will be remembered as positive in a historic light in anyway. Carter had the Camp David Accords and SALT II.

I don’t think its a coincidence the Obama administration has been hunting for another SALT type agreement with Russia as of late. He knows foreign policy is the only way he might be able to compensate for his lousy domestic policy and even that can break both ways. Carter lost in 1980 as much for his foreign policy mistake of deciding to not try and keep the Shah as anything else. 1980 wouldve been far closer if there hadn’t been ribbons tied on trees across the country.

The resentment is going to get more real as time goes on.

Want to know why Jo Bonner called for Joe Barton to resign? Just google where his congressional district is and you’ll see why and then go and apply that same reasoning to Jeff Miller.

This thing has become hotter than a jalapeno pepper and I don’t think Obama realizes he’s playing with fire as he does this.

I also think Haley has underestimated the gravity of the situation and is looking right now like someone who’s interested in whoring for BP contributions to run in 2012 than someone who still has to run Mississippi until January 2012.

I’m concerned this thing is gonna backfire on Haley and it is seriously making me reconsider my support of him.

Carter inherited a bad situation and didn’t make it any better but his failures were balanced by his real substantive successes and Carter faced his primary challenge from Kennedy primarily because he took his own party leadership head on over the budget.

I have always thought that if Carter had come in during good times we’d remember him differently. Every president in the 70s ended up leaving office because the public did not like them and if you had asked most people in the beginning of 1983 the same would have been said for Reagan.

With Obama, the problem is that he made promises, didn’t live up to those promises, appears completely and totally aloof and uncaring to the country’s problems and that it’s like he’s got his fingers in his ears trying to ignore it even as it all crashes around him.

Obama is not the second coming of Carter. He’s the second coming of Hoover.

Carter was not a good president but in large part his presidency failed because of the politics of the time and because his premium on being seen as an honest Bible believing Christian took precedence over doing things that politicians do.

If all things had been held equal and the Carter like figure had taken office in 1985, said figure probably wouldn’t be remembered as a failure. Carter also had real problems with being led around by his advisors like a dog on a leash. With Obama, its different.

Obama would have been a failure in good times too but he was simply ill-suited to do well in times like ours. The times were in call for a president like an FDR or a Reagan, someone who can actually inspire people with personal charisma and who can actually make people positive.

The economy was worse in January 1983 then it was in October 1980 but none of us remember that because Reagan wasn’t the downer that Carter was and because ultimately the summer of 1983 was when we finally pulled out of the slump.

Obama’s problem is not a problem of being whipped by his advisors or of having some deep seated belief system that won’t let him engage in standard Washington politics. If anything, Obama has represented the worst in Washington politics. His problem is that at heart he is an aloof, empty suit more interested in the trappings of being president then the actual governing.

It was also obvious that it was going to turn out this way because he ran on some vague slogans and had this habit of avoiding every controversial issue that he could.

In this respect he’s actually worse then Carter. Carter bumbled and made mistakes but Carter actually stood for things. He may have given us the malaise speeches and all of that but they weren’t pretty BS designed to flatter us and he gave them knewing it could un-elect him. Obama’s whole term has been fluff and nothing else.

I think after all of us who lived through the 70s are in our retirement years Carter will probably be re-evaluated and moved up from F- to C-. Obama will be an F for all time just like Hoover (who he shares so many similarities with its uncanny)