I just watched one of the most chilling documentaries ever

[BB Bobcat]

Obviously this thread has gone way off the original topic, but it made me think of how when I was a kid (around 1983, in fact) I used to just think matter-of-factly that the world was going to end sometime in my lifetime beause of a nuclear war. I don't remember being upset about it. I sort of accepted that it was just the way it was.

Weird to think back on that now.

Of course, I also assumed that all pro sports would be played by robots.

 

[writing irish]

From now on, Bad Guy Zero is Comrade Jagoff. Or Jagov, depending on how you transliterate the Cyrillic.

Fenian, no one wants to remember that Carter was a president whose policies were generally conservative and right-wing. Idiot Collective False Memory has deemed that he was a pacifist hippie who masochistically got a boner every time the US was humiliated on the world stage. Never mind that he helped prop up Pahlavi, Marcos, Park and Suharto in Asia along with Romero, Pinochet and Somoza in the Americas. Among others. But the cretins of the world will forever think that the pro-corporate, generally conservative Carter was some kind of Southern Fried Socialist who delighted in being a bottom at marijuana-fueled bisexual orgies.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

I always thought the Cold War ended when Rocky beat Drago.

 

[writing irish]

I always thought the Cold War ended when Rocky beat Drago.

It ended after Rambo helped the loony religious terrorists freedom fighters in Rambo III.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

From now on, Bad Guy Zero is Comrade Jagoff. Or Jagov, depending on how you transliterate the Cyrillic.

Fenian, no one wants to remember that Carter was a president whose policies were generally conservative and right-wing. Idiot Collective False Memory has deemed that he was a pacifist hippie who masochistically got a boner every time the US was humiliated on the world stage. Never mind that he helped prop up Pahlavi, Marcos, Park and Suharto in Asia along with Romero, Pinochet and Somoza in the Americas. Among others. But the cretins of the world will forever think that the pro-corporate, generally conservative Carter was some kind of Southern Fried Socialist who delighted in being a bottom at marijuana-fueled bisexual orgies.

I worked for Mo Udall, an actual liberal, for two years and even he wasn't the furthest left in the 1976 field. That would have been the great Fred Harris.
Carter was the centrist Southerner.

 

[EE94]

Long story short ...

you lied

 

[Guerrillascribe]

Someone needs to make a chilling documentary about what the queers are doing to the soil.

Landing strips, for Gay Martians!

 

[The Big Ragu]

From now on, Bad Guy Zero is Comrade Jagoff. Or Jagov, depending on how you transliterate the Cyrillic.

Fenian, no one wants to remember that Carter was a president whose policies were generally conservative and right-wing. Idiot Collective False Memory has deemed that he was a pacifist hippie who masochistically got a boner every time the US was humiliated on the world stage. Never mind that he helped prop up Pahlavi, Marcos, Park and Suharto in Asia along with Romero, Pinochet and Somoza in the Americas. Among others. But the cretins of the world will forever think that the pro-corporate, generally conservative Carter was some kind of Southern Fried Socialist who delighted in being a bottom at marijuana-fueled bisexual orgies.

I don't think either is the correct characterization of him (right wing or hippie). He was pretty much a modern-day politician. A centrist. They tend to win, and it's why there aren't huge differences between the government you get from the Democrats or the Republicans. They're the same people toting around different party names. The differences tend to have more to do with what kind of leader they are, as well as what happens beyond their control while they are office, not what party they came from. Carter wasn't the most effective leader. Aside from being a right-down-the-middle kind of politician, he ran as an outsider who was going to challenge the D.C. orthodoxy. And it's what the country wanted to hear because it had been so devastated by Nixon. The problem was he stayed an outsider and didn't have the political skills to broker anything through the legislature. So he was ineffectual about getting anything done. He also served at a time that would have been challenging for any president. We were at a particularly bad time in the economic cycle, fueled mostly by energy costs that were beyond Carter's control. Policy-wise, he was kind of clueless about what to do, and we ended up with stagflation for the first time. It challenged basic macroeconomic theory, which takes for granted that you sacrifice economic growth for inflation or inflation for economic growth. Under him, we saw a first-of-its-kind phenomenon: the economy slowed down to a recession at the same time inflation was spiraling out of control. It was a pretty brutal time for America when you couple how beaten up we were getting abroad with the Iranian hostage situation.

A lot of people thought we'd never see the weird phenomenon of stagflation again. It's a set of circumstances that is hard to bring on yourself. But we may be facing it right now, actually. Energy costs are rising like mad (so did food costs--by a shocking amount--in the last Labor Department report), which is causing inflation to creep up on us. The producer price index also has been rising sharply, and economists are predicting inflation for next year. At the same time, we are seeing the signs of a recession for 2008, fueled by a number of things, including consumers having been weakened by the housing bubble and the credit crunch that occurred because of the sub-prime lending market meltdown.

And Bush seems just as clueless about it all as Carter did. It may be time to revive the BeeGees and butterfly collars, because our economy is starting to look more like it did during Carter's time every day. And it is too late to reverse it with better fiscal policy, if that really is the course we are on for the coming year.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Actually, we weren't getting "beaten up abroad" except FOR the Iranian situation. The seeds of the Russian collapse were being sowed in Afghanistan, and Carter's emphasis on human-rights in foreign policy was instrumental in selling the country to the developing world, even though, as WI points out, hewas far from consistent in its application.
The oil-shock wasn't something anyone could have handled.

 

[Tom Petty]

oil shock? yeah, i understand oil shock.

remember when the bottom fell out at the pumps in the month leading up to the last election? remember everyone saying there was no way this administration could control the price of oil so it was just coincidence? remember how the prices went back through the roof less than two weeks after the election?

don't tell me about forking oil shock.

 

[D-3 Fan]

Off-topic subject since we're talking about the Russians vs. Americans: What year did ABC show made-for-tv special "The Day After"? I'm thinking it was 1984, right?

1983.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0085404/

I was eight years old, and two images stayed with me: jason Robards watching the mushroom cloud from a distance. and the kid leaving blood in the blanket she was wrapped in, due to radiation poisoning, which I hadn't heard of before.

I forgot where the movie took place: Kansas City and Lawrence. So I gues it was the Blue Bird of Glow-In-The-Dark-ery.

The director apparently fought for the film to be as graphic as possible. So not only is Nicholas Meyer one of the dudes who saved Star Trek, he also fought to make sure this minseries would scare the living daylioghts out of every kid who saw it.

When judged with the eyes of 1983, I think it served its purpose.

Thanks, Piotr. All I remembered is the same Robards scene, because it was on the commercials promoting the movie. My folks wouldn't let me see the show 'cause they knew it would scare the living shirt out of us kiddies back then. The thought of that movie today still gives me shivers.

 

[Batman]

oil shock? yeah, i understand oil shock.

remember when the bottom fell out at the pumps in the month leading up to the last election? remember everyone saying there was no way this administration could control the price of oil so it was just coincidence? remember how the prices went back through the roof less than two weeks after the election?

don't tell me about forking oil shock.

If there's one good thing about the perpetual presidential election cycle, this is it. Wanting to get elected makes those forkers actually accomplish something. It'd be nice if we could have an election every other week.