That's my president! Leader of the Free World!

[Loxley]

Personally i dislike the smiler the most.

 

[Bradylama]

Limiting our Freedoms, to keep us safe.

 

[Brother None]

The Bay of Pigs, yeah disaster. His father, yeah disaster. But JFK the worst ever, lol that’s got to be a joke. Do you regard the Cuban Missile Crisis as a huge failure on their part?

Yes, because the fact was that the Russians, probably drunk of their asses, ended up being the reasonable ones and pulling back. The Russians saved the planet there, whereas crazy Kennedy wanted to blow it up

We'd have an early-day fallout now, thanks to that wanker

I particularly enjoy this reason, especially from my fellow Southerners. I admit that I used to buy it, too, but when you really investigate the whole thing, it all comes back to slavery. States Rights = Slavery. Sure you had things like Federally instituted tariffs that were harming the Southern Economy, but there would have never been a war if Slavery wasn't an issue.

Meh. Slavery was kind of interwoven into the whole matter, as a kind of cause-result thing constantly popping up, but that doesn't mean your situation was the same as in other countries that had and abolished slavery. There was too much going on

It was the War effort itself that brought America out of the Depression, not the New Deal

Arguably, I suggest you talk to welsh about that one, though

That's an odd argument as the economy was moving again, albeit sluggishly, until the second dip of '38-'39. The fact that the war effort moved it back up finally is not that surprising, wars tend to do that, just like with Bush, but I'd call that a kind of final shove. Who knows how ready the US would've been for it without the ND?

The thing is, there wasn't really a "true victor" in the war. In Europe, Stalin did all of the bruntwork, but it was us and the Chinese that were grinding down the Japs. Of course, Stalin ended up riding roughshod over Manchukuo and Korea, but how long would it have taken him to invade Japan?

You, the Chinese and the colonies, ye fool, the Dutch were fighting against the Japs too.

A "true victor" kills the highest number of enemies and gains the most land out of it. I think you'll find that's Stalin.

 

[Bradylama]

That's an odd argument as the economy was moving again, albeit sluggishly, until the second dip of '38-'39. The fact that the war effort moved it back up finally is not that surprising, wars tend to do that, just like with Bush, but I'd call that a kind of final shove. Who knows how ready the US would've been for it without the ND?

Well, wars only bolster the economy if you win. And if all of your industries are intact. AND if your economy was dedicated to the war effort.

What caused the Great Depression in the United States was when consumer demand caused by the war dropped when people had all of the things they wanted. It's the reason companies don't make anything to last anymore, the perpetuation of business through an expiration date. The Stock Market crash was the catalyst for a crisis that was waiting to happen.

Now, the thing about interventionist economic policies is that they can only work with the pretext of previous growth. That was the reason the New Deal was such a failure, because there was no economy to be perpetuated. After World War 2, however, all of a sudden you have massive consumerism, which was able to support surviving New Deal policies.

A "true victor" kills the highest number of enemies and gains the most land out of it. I think you'll find that's Stalin.

If you look at wars from a purely material perspective, sure. Sometimes simply maintaining one's autonomy is enough to claim victory (the Southern battle plan, incidentally ). In that sense, the Allies were the true victors in the long run because they kept Europe from being dominated by the Russians.

Meh. Slavery was kind of interwoven into the whole matter, as a kind of cause-result thing constantly popping up, but that doesn't mean your situation was the same as in other countries that had and abolished slavery. There was too much going on

What the Hell is that supposed to mean? Aren't we talking about the American situation? What do abolitionist movements in other nations have to do with the situation in the States? Other than, of course, the immediate obvious situation of the CSA seeking recognition from the UK.

 

[calculon000]

Ok, did any of you watch the little video? Ends up its a thumbs up, not middle finger. Human anatomy.

CNN just reported that the white house told a blogger that he was giving thumbs up rather than the finger. I can kind of see it if I look at the close up pic on the link on the first post.

 

[Brother None]

Well, wars only bolster the economy if you win.

Bullshit. Wars may not bolster the economy of the losing side, but the long-term effects on the economy are always good. Even for the losing side.

What caused the Great Depression in the United States was when consumer demand caused by the war dropped when people had all of the things they wanted. It's the reason companies don't make anything to last anymore, the perpetuation of business through an expiration date.

Which will eventually come crashing down as good start running out, rather than consumers. Thank you, capitalism, for fucking up the world.

Now, the thing about interventionist economic policies is that they can only work with the pretext of previous growth. That was the reason the New Deal was such a failure, because there was no economy to be perpetuated.

Wait? Failure? Uhm...the economy did recover, dude, even before WW II. IF only a little. How's that "such a failure"?

If you look at wars from a purely material perspective, sure. Sometimes simply maintaining one's autonomy is enough to claim victory (the Southern battle plan, incidentally ). In that sense, the Allies were the true victors in the long run because they kept Europe from being dominated by the Russians.

No they didn't, they prevented half of Europe from being dominated by the Russians, the Russians got more or less most of it. That's as much as an Allied victory as the Korean war was.

What the Hell is that supposed to mean? Aren't we talking about the American situation? What do abolitionist movements in other nations have to do with the situation in the States? Other than, of course, the immediate obvious situation of the CSA seeking recognition from the UK.

Read the rest of the thread, the original point John brought up was about the succesful move of slavery to non-slavery in South America

 

[Bradylama]

How's that "such a failure"?

Because from the onset of the depression to wartime mobilisation the Unemployment rate stayed at the same level.

No they didn't, they prevented half of Europe from being dominated by the Russians, the Russians got more or less most of it. That's as much as an Allied victory as the Korean war was.

Wasn't it, though?

Read the rest of the thread, the original point John brought up was about the succesful move of slavery to non-slavery in South America

Oh. Ok then.

 

[Maphusio]

Kharn, humm I don't see the facts behind what you say. So I am going to assume you hate the guy so much you are too flabbergasted to say anything at all.

Personally, I believe the decision Kennedy made was the best you could have done. The only other option was total global thermal nuclear war. I would rather we went the rout we did and put up that blockade and eventually dismantling our weapons in Turkey. I do agree that last bit was the wrong thing to do with the Russians but it seemed the only option at the time. I think it is very easy to look at things in hindsight and say, “Boy, that was the wrong move.”
At the time you only can guess what moves everyone involved may take.

 

[Hovercar Madness]

personally, I believe the decision Kennedy made was the best you could have done. The only other option was total global thermal nuclear war.

Yeah, that and ofcourse *le shock* letting the ruskies place their missiles on cuba.

 

[welsh]

Because gay people should not be given positions of power.

Red Alert, Red Alert! All personnel immediately don flame-retardant clothing!

As for the other thing, I don't think Bush will be remembered too harshly. As much as I dislike almost everything he, his cronies, and his puppet masters stand for I have to admit that he's pretty charismatic, and his administration didn't really have any more underhandedness, lies, and out-and-out criminality than any other administration that's been around since I've been alive. I'm sure a lot that's gone on under him will be remembered as short-sighted blunders made for the personal gain of himself and his 'friends' rather than for the benefit of the country, but the same goes for Reagan, Bush Sr. and probably even Clinton. They all suck, the best that can be done until humanity has evolved is to vociferously and vigorously oppose anything anyone in power wants to do and hopefully in the process render them fairly harmless.

Montez, what sorry lot of leadership your generation has suffered through.

Ah... hmmm... Well you did have that Iran-Contra thing with Reagan. Bush Sr? Not sure what skeletons were in his closet. Clinton has a blowjob and Whitewater. Not a great record, sure.

But compared to this asshole? I mean corruption and bad choices just oozes out of Bush Jrs. pores.

Reagan- Mr. "I don't remember that..." Yes, he came up with SDI which sacred the russians, but he also got marines killed in Lebanon and supported some rather nasty people in Central America.

Nixon- can't give credit to his foreign policies, except that he picked Kissinger. That said, some of his domestic policies were rather far sighted. It's a shame he had the FBI collecting files on everyone and used IRS audits against his enemies.

Truman- yes, he was left out of World War 2 but give the guy a break. He did go with the Marshal Plan, fought it out in Korea and made the Truman Doctrine- the containment policy that kept the Cold War Cold.

Kennedy- Bay of Pigs - bad. Berlin? (We all forget that one). Cuban Missile Crisis.... but then again he also helped push Civil Rights leading to the Voting Rights Act.

Jackson- for getting rid of the National Bank? Bradylama, and here I was thinking you were a Libertarian!

Lincoln- not his fault the war happened. THat happened when the Senate became tilted against the Slave states. While the Senate was divided, the Slave states were safe. When that was tipped, war. Not Lincoln's fault.

Great Depression due to stagnant consumer sales? Sounds like its something from Republican revisions to me. But it does have support-

In the August 1990 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Christine D. Romer writes that "the negative effect of stock market variability is more than strong enough to account for the entire decline in real consumer spending on durables that occurred in late 1929 and 1930."

More commonly

Though the U.S. economy had gone into depression six months earlier, the Great Depression may be said to have begun with a catastrophic collapse of stock-market prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929. During the next three years stock prices in the United States continued to fall, until by late 1932 they had dropped to only about 20 percent of their value in 1929. Besides ruining many thousands of individual investors, this precipitous decline in the value of assets greatly strained banks and other financial institutions, particularly those holding stocks in their portfolios. Many banks were consequently forced into insolvency; by 1933, 11,000 of the United States' 25,000 banks had failed. The failure of so many banks, combined with a general and nationwide loss of confidence in the economy, led to much-reduced levels of spending and demand and hence of production, thus aggravating the downward spiral. The result was drastically falling output and drastically rising unemployment; by 1932, U.S. manufacturing output had fallen to 54 percent of its 1929 level, and unemployment had risen to between 12 and 15 million workers, or 25-30 percent of the work force.

The Great Depression began in the United States but quickly turned into a worldwide economic slump owing to the special and intimate relationships that had been forged between the United States and European economies after World War I. The United States had emerged from the war as the major creditor and financier of postwar Europe, whose national economies had been greatly weakened by the war itself, by war debts, and, in the case of Germany and other defeated nations, by the need to pay war reparations. So once the American economy slumped and the flow of American investment credits to Europe dried up, prosperity tended to collapse there as well. The Depression hit hardest those nations that were most deeply indebted to the United States, i.e., Germany and Great Britain. In Germany, unemployment rose sharply beginning in late 1929, and by early 1932 it had reached 6 million workers, or 25 percent of the work force. Britain was less severely affected, but its industrial and export sectors remained seriously depressed until World War II. Many other countries had been affected by the slump by 1931.

Almost all nations sought to protect their domestic production by imposing tariffs, raising existing ones, and setting quotas on foreign imports. The effect of these restrictive measures was to greatly reduce the volume of international trade: by 1932 the total value of world trade had fallen by more than half as country after country took measures against the importation of foreign goods.

As for the successes of the New Deal?
Considering some of the legislation- FDIC, Securities regulation, and more helped give the economic system more structure and certainty- and thus better protection of property rights and greater certainty for investors.

But I am sure this will need to be elaborated.
Later.

 

[Maphusio]

personally, I believe the decision Kennedy made was the best you could have done. The only other option was total global thermal nuclear war.

Yeah, that and ofcourse *le shock* letting the ruskies place their missiles on cuba.

So you are saying they knew about the missiles long before they were even being installed? If so please could you give me a source I was not aware of that.

 

[welsh]

Actually, I think the intelligence bungled the Cuba Missile thing quite badly.

They found out rather late, but not too late.

What they didn't know, though, almost really fucked it up.

At one of the earliest meetings of the X-Com, Kennedy asked Sec of Defense McNamara what was the consequence of the missiles in Cuba.

McNamara said, "Well basically nothing. We got missiles in Turkey too. So their short-range missiles balances against our short-range missiles." He switched his position afterwards because the Cuban Missile problem was seen more as a threat to US control over Latin America and less as a threat to National Security. But what was important, was that McNamara put that point out- strategically, they didn't make much difference.

What almost screws it up is that some of the X-Com members were all about surgical air strikes and land invasions. Kennedy ruled out air strikes because the airforce couldn't guarantee 100% effectiveness (and considering how many bombs that were later dropped on North Vietnam with such little effect- that was definitely true).

Pushing the surgical strike/invasion was Curtis Lemay, the general who orchestrated firebombing of Japan during World War 2 (who had been McNamara's boss back then). LeMay was all about getting the next big war started before the Russkies had the advantage- to him war (be it nuclear or not) was inevitable.

As it turns out, Russian troops on the ground had tactical nuclear weapons, and Russian submarines supposedly had nuclear torpedoes that they would use in the event of invasion or military strike. The US government didn't know about that. Should the US have invaded Cuba, it would have led to tactical nuclear war. In the event of tactical nuclear war against Cuba, war would have started in Europe (Article 5 of NATO), and thus escalate to the Big One.

Thus the adage- it's not what you know that you need to worry about, it's what you don't know that will bite you in the ass.

So yeah, I give Kennedy some points for keeping us out of war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Much of this has come out in documents from both sides and interviews. The documentary Fog of War is pretty interesting on that as well.

 

[Maphusio]

Thus the adage- it's not what you know that you need to worry about, it's what you don't know that will bite you in the ass. -Best line ever. Too bad that motto probably helped seal Kennedy’s fait.

 

[Hovercar Madness]

So you are saying they knew about the missiles long before they were even being installed? If so please could you give me a source I was not aware of that.

Huh? No, I'm not saying that. All I was saying, as welsh already noted, that the americanos already had most of the reds in their sights from turkey and that the alternative to escalating the situation and thus threatening the entire world with global nuclear warfare was... not escalating the situation. The ruskies were just leveling the playing field.

Welsh's right though, that while JFK wasn't exactly on the right path, at least he didn't listen to the hawks.

 

[Brother None]

Kharn, humm I don't see the facts behind what you say. So I am going to assume you hate the guy so much you are too flabbergasted to say anything at all.

Personally, I believe the decision Kennedy made was the best you could have done. The only other option was total global thermal nuclear war. I would rather we went the rout we did and put up that blockade and eventually dismantling our weapons in Turkey. I do agree that last bit was the wrong thing to do with the Russians but it seemed the only option at the time. I think it is very easy to look at things in hindsight and say, “Boy, that was the wrong move.”
At the time you only can guess what moves everyone involved may take.

Why would I be flabbergasted? It's not like a naked chick just ran by the window.

No, you see, Kennedy's option WAS global thermo-nuclear war. That's exactly my problem. The Cuban missile crisis was a problem, yes, but realise that in the end it woul've caused global thermo-nuclear war if, say, Stalin had still been chief in Russia. The fact was that Kennedy wasn't going to draw back, he wasn't the sensible one in the case. As much as I love the man*, I don't like the thought of him blowing up the world too much. Lil' psychotic bastid.

The most relativising thing in all that is the fact that people didn't fully understand the direct threat at that point and lines of communication were only fully opened afterwards. That doesn't mean I like it that Kennedy had to push us so close to get there

* On second though, I don't think I actually know a single admirable thing the man did asides from getting shot**
**joke, Kennedophiles calm down

can't give credit to his foreign policies,

You should. Nixon was a fantastic bridge-builders and probably one of the corner-stones that built the near-communist free world we know today. More so than Reagan

When that was tipped, war. Not Lincoln's fault.

Nor was it the fault of the preceding presidents, often labelled "worst presidents ever" because they didn't do anything about it

So yeah, I give Kennedy some points for keeping us out of war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That's just not right, man.

Not invading Cuba en masse does not equate keeping the US out of the war. He made many threatening looming moves towards Cuba. He played a VERY dangerous game of chance, basically risking the life of every human being on the planet because he was a paranoid bastard

He didn't do shit to keep the world from exploding. The Russians did.

Don't get me wrong. Of course the Russians "started it".

But they kind of didn't. They were equalising the field. You had missiles in Turkey. And everyone with a brain knows that's not just about being able to bomb the Russkies, it's also about having a DIRECT lever over the Middle East. So they chose a spot that was its equal; direct threat to the USA + lever on South America.

That means they did something exactly as bad as what the US did

Yet somehow the Russkies didn't flip out when it happened in Turkey, did they?

 

[calculon000]

Yeah, that and ofcourse *le shock* letting the ruskies place their missiles on cuba.

Didn't nukes in cube give the USSR first strike capability? As in they were close enough that the USSR could fire nukes and they would get there before the USA could retaliate?

 

[Bradylama]

Jackson- for getting rid of the National Bank? Bradylama, and here I was thinking you were a Libertarian!

I'm Libertarian not impractical. I mean it's not like you can kick out the financial base of the country and expect wonderful things to happen.

Though, Jackson was a badass. How many presidents have beaten their would-be assassins with their own canes? He was still a dick, though.

 

[Dapper Dan Man]

Jackson- for getting rid of the National Bank? Bradylama, and here I was thinking you were a Libertarian!

I'm Libertarian not impractical. I mean it's not like you can kick out the financial base of the country and expect wonderful things to happen.

Though, Jackson was a badass. How many presidents have beaten their would-be assassins with their own canes? He was still a dick, though.

I'm libertarian as well, heh. Though, I am curious as to how you know Jackson was an asshole...did he personally insult you or something?

 

[Bradylama]

I'm not sure how exactly Jackson wasn't an asshole. He isn't particularly known for being nice to the Indians, or people in general.

Are you saying that Jackson wasn't a jerk or what? I don't get it.

 

[Dapper Dan Man]

I am just saying you shoudl judge him based upont he standards of the time, not the standards of here and now. Historical narrative regarding his personality, or his reasoning for actions, could be biased.