Public Misconceptions about President Jimmy Carter

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

Sometime on or about September 1994, Mister Carter did the 82nd Airborne Division a small favor.

Hmm: I found out what you mean.


Are we now allowing post-Presiential items?

[cheesehead]

Moderators,

The thread title is still wrong. The omission of "President" gives the false impression that discussion of what Carter has done since (or before) he was president is on-topic; it's not. I have specifically stated that I want discussion limited to Carter's presidential actions -- that is, what President Jimmy Carter did during his term of office 1977-1981, not what former President Carter has done since 1981.

Please change the thread title to exactly what I requested:

Public Misconceptions about President Jimmy Carter

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Ernst,

Please refrain from posting again in this thread. Your contributions and corrections have been disruptive and are no longer welcome.

Please make no more change to this thread and/or its title, unless you change the title to:

Public Misconceptions about President Jimmy Carter

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Xyzzy,

If this thread's title is not changed to exactly what I requested within 24 hours, then I request that you make me a moderator (despite my having declined that post in the past) ASAP.

Please take steps, if possible, to dissuade Ernst Mayer from further contributing to, or changing (except for changing the title as I requested) this thread. His posts and changes have been excessively disruptive and are no longer welcome. A little humor was fine, but Ernst has gone too far here.

[garo]

When I first changed the thread title it wouldn't let me fit the President bit in a there is a limit to title length. I see that another moderator got rid of the correction and added the President.

[nibble4bits]

Hmm all I can say about the embassy is... crosscutting aka confetti shredder or to be cool - shredder fed to incinerator automatically! If I really wanted to be ultra(beyond government) paranoid, I'd just use key transparencies but those aren't exactly practical. ;) The keys work by unobscuring otherwise random looking pixels. See this example: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/Gr...ageEncryption/ Of course it suffers from the Enigma weakness aka reused keys and bad implementation.

So is it true that Jimmy Carter loved daylight savings? There are some that think that alone was the worst decision of any president. Yeah, let's wait until right before computers were started to all have builtin clocks. VCRs always being an hour off during half the year is pretty funny too for those too lazy to get someone who knows how to change them. Sorry, thought it pretty funny myself, but I'm not sure how many here agree.

[cheesehead]

Ernst Mayer,

I owe you a big apology. I publicly accused you of an action that was not yours. It is now clear to me, as I should have made sure of before posting publicly, that you did not make as many of this thread's title changes as I thought you did.

I apologize for my angry words.

I wish to retract (but, of course, cannot actually, now) my asking you to stay out of this thread, and my asking a moderator to take action to ban you. I now say that you are again welcome to contribute here,

According to my current understanding, nothing you actually did was offensive to me. I regret having made such a public statement before getting the facts straight. Furthermore, it was both rude and stupid of me to make any public statement before communicating with you privately.

I can't guarantee I won't do something like this again, but I will try very hard to remember, in future times of stress, what I did here.

I deeply apologize, Ernst.

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Folks,

This is why I shouldn't be made a moderator. I have too much of a temper, and not enough humility, to keep from making myself look ridiculous in public.

I'm sorry.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by nibble4bits

So is it true that Jimmy Carter loved daylight savings? There are some that think that alone was the worst decision of any president.

Exactly which Carter decision concerning DST were those people referring to?

Yeah, let's wait until right before computers were started to all have builtin clocks. VCRs always being an hour off during half the year is pretty funny too for those too lazy to get someone who knows how to change them.

From the latter sentence, I deduce that some-that-think, or you, refer to either:

a) having Daylight Savings Time at all, for six months each year,

or

b) extending Daylight Savings Time to all 12 months instead of only six months each year.

There's also another possibility:

c) confusion with the title of one of Carter's books -- An Hour Before Daylight.

I presume that you know that Carter is not responsible for a). I wish I could presume that about the majority of other folks. According to http://geography.about.com/cs/daylightsavings/a/dst.htm (which may not be authoritative -- I'm in a hurry): "Daylight Saving Time was instituted in the United States during World War I in order to save energy for war production by taking advantage of the later hours of daylight between April and October."

I'm sure your posting was not due to c), but it would not surprise me to find that many folks to whom you refer have had their beliefs reinforced by c).

That leaves b).

I haven't found any authoritative evidence that Carter was responsible for b). Nixon was the president who, on December 15, 1973 stated,

Originally Posted by http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4073

I AM pleased to sign today H.R. 11324, placing the United States on daylight saving time for a period of approximately 2 years, beginning at 2 a.m., Sunday, January 6, 1974."

Did Carter reinstate, or sign a bill that reinstated, year-round DST? I haven't yet found any reference to that in my hasty search.

So, nibble4bits, you have given us a new example of public misconception about President Carter (unless the folks you refer to were talking about some other, fourth possibility).

In accordance with the request I made earlier, here is an example of this public misconception:

Originally Posted by http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=10749, comment #11

All others that want to blame it on Bush. If you remember it was Jimmy Carter that extended DST for a whole year to save energy.

A few comments later on that same page is ("#10" is the commenter's mistake for #11):

Originally Posted by http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=10749, comment #18

#10 The year-round DST experiment was in the winter of 1974-75, when Gerald Ford was president.

(It started in January 1974 -- during the winter of 1973-74 -- as shown in Nixon's statement.)

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

I publicly accused you of an action that was not yours.

Well, I did do the nose ... but she's a witch!

No worries, Cheesiepoofs - it's e'er been true that the sound of a ripping bodice can drive even men of otherwise impeccable manners to distraction.

Now: What's all the shouting about?

Now back to our discussion topic, "Jimmy Carter responsible for over 90% of global warming."

[ewmayer]

Wish Upon a Pump: Genesis of energy debacle lies with the Reagan presidency

Those of you with keen memories may recall that the energy crisis is not new. In 1977, Jimmy Carter called it the "moral equivalent of war." In the sort of speech a politician rarely delivers, he told a not-particularly-grateful nation that his energy program was going to hurt, but "a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy." The core of his initiative was conservation. Carter had earlier asked us to lower our thermostats and wear sweaters. He wore one himself.

Reagan, who succeeded Carter in the White House, wore only a smile. For him, there was no energy crisis. Whereas Carter had insisted that only the government could manage the energy crisis, Reagan, in his first inaugural, demanded that government get out of the way. Speaking of general economic conditions at the time, he said, "Government is not the solution to our problem." He went on to call for America to return to greatness, to "reawaken this industrial giant," and all sorts of swell things would happen. It was wonderful stuff.

...

The worst part of Reaganism was its political success. It left behind a coterie of panting acolytes who learned from Reagan himself that optimism, cheerfulness, an embrace of magical thinking and the avoidance of the painful truth was the formula for victory at the polls. For a time, it worked -- the cost of gas went down -- and Carter, that scold in the silly sweater, was banished. As they say in New Orleans, "Laissez les bons temps rouler!" (Let the good times roll!) Upbeat? You bet. But not a business plan.

...

This is the doleful legacy of Reaganism. We have become a nation that believes that you can get something for nothing. We thought that the energy crisis would be solved . . . somehow, and that no one would have to suffer. We still believe in the magical qualities of America, that something about us makes us better. Yet we have a chaotic and mediocre education system that desperately needs more money and higher standards, but we think -- don't we? -- that somehow we will maintain our lifestyle anyway. Hey, is this America or what?

Somewhere in his peripatetic travels, the much-maligned Jimmy Carter -- an artless politician, to be sure -- must scratch his head at the reverence still accorded Reagan. The way things are going, the Gipper's visage will be added to Mount Rushmore. Not that anyone will notice. It'll be too expensive to drive there.

Carter must indeed be feeling a bit like the mythical Cassandra with respect to the current energy crisis.