Whose your favorite president ever?

[One_Tycoon]

I also love the way he used social security funds and put them in the treasury to pay back the deficit he created.

The Government still does this to this vary day. That's partially how Clinton's "surplus" budget years were achieved. All you have to do is look at one of those round graphs to see where the govt routinely borrows money out of, besides foreign countries.

But Ronald Reagan did TRY to cut spending. In fact he and his team were so foolish, that they agreed to raise taxes in exchange for spending cuts. The tax increases came immeditely, but those imaginary cuts in spending vanished and the debt went up. Hence why this should be used as a good illustration of why Small Government conservatives should never compromise with Democrat Leftists who offer imaginary 3 to 1 spending cuts for tax increases. Never mind that they shouldn't raise taxes on principle, but in practice it would never get done. Every spending cut that a Democrat proposes is just slowing down the rate of growth over a period of time...which isn't much of anything.

It's like a 180 pound person deciding that they need to go on a diet and lose 10 pounds. But first they go up to 200 pounds and then move back down to 190 and say that they lost 10 pounds.

[Rudyo]

Why of course, the one eternal president, Kim Il Sung. Either that or Bruce Springsteen.

[Beercules]

Manny Pacquiao

[Rudyo]

I forgot Billy Joel, the president of New York

[Mukuro]

This is a strawman argument. Nobody is saying people shouldn't be held responsible for their actions. That is why we have the most people incarcerated in planet earth. You commit crimes, and we punish you with prison.

Saying that there are two choices here that people like you run away from when it comes to the reality that blacks do commit more crimes than any other ethnic group in the country.

Choice #1

Black people are inferior to everyone else. They don't have the intelligence, or capability to live peaceful with the rest of us. They cannot excel in our society.

Choice #2

Many black people have been subject to hundreds of years of injustice, low expectations, failed policies by our govt and the most important...the destruction of the black family in America has caused the decline of black youths.

I'm not saying we shouldn't punish people. I'm not saying people shouldn't be held to the same standard regardless of race. I'm saying that either you think something is inherently wrong with black people and they are inferior.

Or there are other mitigating factors that have caused cycles of ignorance, poverty, violence, drug use, illiteracy, unemployment and teenage pregnancy in the black community.

So tell me which one is it? Or is it something else that I'm missing. I'm sick of people hiding their racism behind comments like this.

Didn't you just blame Reagan for black people being in prison for doing drugs? Don't get me wrong, our drug laws are imbecilic, but it is convenient to ignore the agency black people have taken in their own undoing.

My choice is choice 3. Black people, like all other people, are perfectly capable of excelling in society by focusing on family, education, and hard work like every successful minority in this country. That is the pathway. Each generation will be better off than the one before it. The best way to make sure a vast majority of black people stay locked in their cycle of poverty and crime is to subsidize it and make excuses for it. Treat them as exceptional and hold them to a lower standard.

[chris boys]

I think you miss an essential point. It goes to the famous saying of Harry Truman: "The buck stops here." That is, the President must ultimately take responsibility for the general economic shape and foreign policy situation (wars/peace etc.) that happened during his watch.

Here is the link for job creation for the various US Presidents (oops -- sorry, I cannot yet post a URL on this site, but just google "job creation US Presidents" and it takes you to the Wiki page)

Now, check carefully the numbers for GWB, and then compare them with Clinton's. Also, the jobs that Bush created has the very small net positive number ONLY because of government job creation. His net private sector job creation for eight years was a minus half million (approximately).

That is a fantastically bad economic performance, and the buck stops with him.

As for 9-ll, a good way to see what I am saying is to compare with the Bay of Pigs. the latter was a complete disaster (which happened at about the same time in Kennedy's term as 9-ll did in Bush's). Kennedy took complete responsibility for what happened. He had signed off on what his generals (and Allen Dulles and others) had told him, but he took it on the chin publicly because the buck stopped with him. Like that, the buck stopped with Bush on 9-ll.

As for the Iraq War, it is very similar. It does not matter one iota what the Democrats were also saying. Bush is the man who had the intelligence (or should have had it -- we elect a President to get to the bottom of things, don't we?). He is the guy who sent Colin Powell to the UN with that crap, he is the guy who went to Congress and presented his case and got the votes. He is the guy who ultimately initiated the war. Therefore the buck stops with him.

Here is the link for deficits under Clinton (oops -- sorry, I cannot yet post a URL on this site, but just google "budget deficits Bill Clinton" and the first hit takes you to the fact check page on the subject)

The graph speaks for itself.

How do you know I am a liberal?

Finally, can I get some help from some others on this thread, please? Just check in and tell if you agree (generally) with what I am saying or do you think 1Bad65 is correct.

[chris boys]

I decided that before I go to who I think are the top guns, I want to deal with the case of JFK.

I think we can all agree that when it comes to intelligence and speaking ability and inspiration for the American people, he was of the highest caliber. I was a young lad during his Presidency and was totally inspired by him. My father (an immigrant electrical engineer from the UK) absolutely loved hearing him speak. His speech at the American University (the last one he gave) on trying to have real peace and some substantive agreements with the Soviets was one of the very greatest ever given by an American President. You can find him giving that speech on YouTube, and it thrills me to this day. He inspired the whole world. Hell, his speech in Berlin was like a rock concert. It was so inspiring that commentators there at the time said that the people seemed close to rioting in support of what he was saying.

His handling of the Cuban Missile crisis was diplomacy of the highest caliber and under the most trying circumstances any President ever had to encounter. He (and his advisers and his brother) literally saved the world form nuclear war.

He also had some decent accomplishments legislatively – the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, a farm bill, man-power training legislation, increases in Social Security benefits and the minimum wage, and the Area Redevelopment Program.

I think here (with his legislation), however, we can begin to get a better understanding of his Presidency. At the time he was assassinated, he had two very big pieces of legislation before Congress (the ones I mention above were relatively minor) – The Civil Rights Act and the tax-cut bill. If you read Robert Caro’s latest volume of his biography of LBJ, you see that this legislation was going nowhere. You also see that JFK apparently did not understand this fact. He and his advisers had some big blind spots about how to get things done in Congress. Both of those pieces of legislation were going to die an unflattering death.

LBJ was the guy who knew what had to be done. On the third day of his Presidency he met late at night with the Kennedy economic advisers and discussed the tax cut bill. They were humbled by him. He quickly showed what was really going on and what they had to do to get the bill passed (some things they had never even considered!). There were some questions and answers, but within an hour they realized Johnson was correct. Afterward, they recounted how they walked out of that room with a totally changed outlook – the bill could be passed if they did what Johnson said. But, of course, they didn’t really do that much in the end. Johnson did almost everything himself on that bill (in a sort of tour de force with his encounters with Senator Harry Byrd). He got it through.

The tax bill turned out to be very important. The economy had been sluggish for about three years running. The tax cuts (taking down the outrageous rates that still lingered from the WWII war years) initiated a sustained period of great economic growth.

The situation with the Civil Rights Act was even worse. Johnson had attempted to tell JFk the mistakes he should not make with this legislation, but he ignored LBJ’s advice (if he ever even got it – LBJ was treated like a leper by the Kennedys). As a result, Kennedy had fallen into a bear trap (the one the South always used in the Senate -- for a hundred years -- to defeat civil rights). Again, Johnson quickly sussed out the situation and found the one key step (Caro calls it the “one lever”), the only one, that could be taken to get the bill making progress. Then he put the entire weight of his administration behind that lever and leaned on it with everything he had. He also got on board all of the key Senators and Congressman (most of whom he knew personally very well) to lean on it as well. He also made it clear publicly that this Act was going to be the real deal – strong with no compromises. In fact, the Act got stronger as it made its way, not weaker. It turned out to be one the truly great legislative accomplishments in American history.

So, I think we must take a sobering view of what Kennedy’s accomplishments would have looked like at the end of his first term. He would have had two very black marks. And remember, the Civil Rights Act HAD to pass – the country was being torn apart by what was happening in the South.

Even more sobering is to examine Kennedy’s policy towards Cuba. Kennedy and his brother (especially his brother) were borderline maniacs when it came to Cuba. They just couldn’t let it go. Kennedy had suffered a big black eye at the Bay of Pigs, but apparently he couldn’t understand that the Cuban government (and military) were strong and enjoyed great popular support amongst the Cuban people. Kennedy was always hammering on the CIA to find some way to get rid of Castro, mostly by assassinating him. He sent in constant commando raids to sabotage Cuban industry etc..
This is real cowboy crap.

I am a Hindu (yep, I am), and I look at a lot of what happened with Kennedy as karma. He ****ed with Castro, and the Russians decided to support their ally and **** back. Maybe that whole Cuban missile thing would never have happened if Kennedy hadn’t been the maniac he was on Cuba.

There was something similar going on with Vietnam. Kennedy had put in about 15,000 troops into that country (though he lied to the American people about it). That was a significant escalation of the conflict. He also played the key role in the assassination of Diem. Why? Because Diem wanted to make peace with the North! Kennedy had to stop that because he couldn’t have peace during his administration’s first term (from an election he had won so narrowly) and appear weak on fighting communism. The Pentagon Papers make clear the lies and deception that Kennedy was involved in with Vietnam.

There is some evidence that Kennedy was inclined to change course on Vietnam in his second term. He anticipated (correctly) that Goldwater would be his opponent, and he anticipated (again, probably correctly) that he would cream Goldwater and start his second term with a very powerful popular mandate. Then he could make peace and get out of Vietnam, and not suffer fatally with the public. Who knows if this would have actually happened? Maybe, maybe not. But his record that does stand on Vietnam is a dismal one.

I generally do not give a hoot about a President’s personal life. For example, the Monica Lewinsky thing was an embarrassment – mostly for the pursuit of President, not for what he actually did (consensual oral sex with a woman who was batty for him). But Kennedy’s personal life has to be looked at more carefully. This guy took things to a whole new level. He was having affairs with a mobster’s girlfriend and with a gal whose family had strong connections with the East German Secret Police! He was taking secretaries two at a time in the White House swimming pool. He had to have good nookie literally every other day or, as he himself said, he suffered a crushing migraine headache. This had a lot to do with his health. He had Addison’s disease (which he kept secret from the American people), and he was taking an amazing ****tail of steroids and amphetamines to deal with it. Apparently this made him perpetually horny, and he would do just about anything to get his rocks off.

And it seems clear that these things were not going to be kept secret from the public much longer. Major newspapers were doing investigations of his affairs. I think an article in the New York Times was scheduled to come out (but was buried after the assassination). Remember what happened to Clinton? I am almost certain Kennedy would have been impeached (and convicted) or forced to resign when the details came out.

The best way to understand Kennedy is to see those two shots that blew his brains out as the kiss from the Gods. Yep, I am serious. The Gods decided to end his life at just the right time, to let him go and sing with the angels for a while. I loved that man and still do. He was something of a prince; you just had to love him. I cried a heap of tears when he was killed, and I saw grown-ups everywhere crying too. But if we are going to be real here, even a couple of months more and he would have gone down to very bottom of the barrel of Presidents.

The Gods had the big picture in mind. Because Kennedy died a sort of legend. LBJ grasped this immediately. In his speech to Congress following the assassination (another great speech you can find on YouTube), he dedicated everything he was going to do to fulfilling the vision Kennedy had. The public was ready to go with that vision. Congressmen realized that now it was going to be extra risky to oppose Kennedy’s legislation. Not only would they have to deal with a legislative genius (LBJ) but they would have to oppose a public that wanted to put something real and substantive on Kennedy’s grave.

So, what to say? I think the only reasonable assessment is that Kennedy cannot be put at the top tier of Presidents. He was simply too reckless, too prone to obsession. He was a marked man because of those qualities. He had some decent achievements, some very inspiring moments, but he was a light that was burning on a very short wick. He was never going to have the staying power of the really great Presidents. He was doomed to crash, and in a very ignoble way.

Nuff said for now.

[Weebler I]

W is the greatest president we ever had.

lol W had the whole world shook post-9/11.

Didn't you just blame Reagan for black people being in prison for doing drugs? Don't get me wrong, our drug laws are imbecilic, but it is convenient to ignore the agency black people have taken in their own undoing.

My choice is choice 3. Black people, like all other people, are perfectly capable of excelling in society by focusing on family, education, and hard work like every successful minority in this country. That is the pathway. Each generation will be better off than the one before it. The best way to make sure a vast majority of black people stay locked in their cycle of poverty and crime is to subsidize it and make excuses for it. Treat them as exceptional and hold them to a lower standard.

That is what Ben Carson has been saying. Buying into excuses and apportioning blame elsewhere instead of the focus being on them doing the right things to improve just keeps them down. That said, I don't see anything wrong with giving people who need it a helping hand up the ladder but a victim mentality is not the right mindset to self-improvement for anyone.

[baya]

Ask me again 2020..

[baya]

My favorite was Reagan. He did so many great things for the country. To start he created the war on drugs that basically destroyed the black family by incarcerating black men disproportionately to any other group.

I also love the way he used social security funds and put them in the treasury to pay back the deficit he created.

His dealings in Iran Contra pretty much speaks for itself. Selling arms to our enemy, using those finds to fund right wing extremists in Nicaragua and then Bush pardoning all the criminals who were involved. What outstanding person he was.

What about his cutting of funding for aids, or the fact he never wanted to even mention it was a real disease. The best way to defeat a deadly disease is to ignore it. Everyone knows that...

I think my favorite was his support for apartheid in South Africa. He didn't want pass sanctions on De Klerk. What is better than supporting a super racist govt?

I'm so glad we have the Ronald Reagan Hwy here in Florida. I think he should be on the $20, fuk Andrew Jackson.

i attended his casket display in DC as they strolled down georgia ave. honestly, i just thought what made him awesome was that he hated the negroes, but that other stuff you mentioned, whowa.