Re: nbc Obamamania nbc


"gumboman" <dontemailme@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:08qsr3p5llmutct604v9k57os78738l60t@xxxxxxxxxx
On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:56:09 -0800, "Willy Eyenine"
<billyeye9@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Bay of Pigs? The resulting Cuban Missile Crisis? And depending on who's
to
be believed, alleged threats of aggression over
the Berlin Wall (I don't know how credible such allegations are or
aren't)?
And his hands are far from squeaky clean when it comes to Vietnam.
From a rearview mirror, it seems as though Kennedy shared much with Reagan
in the area of foreign policy.


Words such as ""To achieve this goal political freedom must accompany
material progress. Our Alliance for Progress is an alliance of free
governments - and it must work to eliminate tyranny from a hemisphere in
which it has no rightful place.."
somehow don't seem quite as jaw-droppingly inspirational, particularly
after
these past five years....

But I'm the first to admit that I didn't live (well, alive...but only by
months) through it to know
what sort of psychological toll all of this was taking on the nation at
the
time....nor to respond with any credibility as to whether
such fears were real, valid, bunk or fabricated. So, it's an area to
which
I could easily be swayed by someone who lived
through it.



I'm not sure I can sway you because I'm not sure what I think myself.
I was 12 when Kennedy died but I remember my parents and their friends
as being big supporters. And I went to a Catholic school so you can
probably imagine the grief on 'that day'.

Like Joe, I've read a lot about it and find him a facinating
character. Here;s my take on some of the things you've mentioned.

Bay of Pigs - an Eisenhower operation that he wasn't going to
interfere with but had the balls to tell them NO after it went bad
instead of sending in additional forces.

Cuban Missile Crisis - I think he had the right idea that the colonial
era was over and he wasn't going to be involved in it being sustained
through the US. There were a lot of people, powerful people, who had
different ideas and by this time he had made some powerful enemies.

Vietnam - I think this is why he was killed. after the election he was
pulling out.

Berlin - not sure what you are referring to here.

At the Johnson Space Center they have a place called Space Center
Houston. It's basically a large exhibit hall of all the various phases
of the space program. They have (or at least used to have) a movie
theatre type room where you went in and watched Kennedy's speech on
the space program (not because it is easy but because it is
hard.........). That still sends chills down my spine.

Thanks for the feedback on what it was like during that time.
Coming from a Roman Catholic family, the only sense I ever got
was the understandable grief that you mentioned. The rest puts it
into a historical context that makes sense for that time (hindsight is
20/20...and sometimes it can be spot on the mark...but it's no substitute
for getting a sense from those who lived through various times in history).







Carter turned out to be correct on just about everything he said don't
you think?

In hindsight, yes.
However, I've never gotten the impression that being correct after
the fact is going to make for great posterity. I value and pay attention
to
what he has to say these days. Truth be told, I find him to be more
effective now than during the years he was President.


He's a good man, an intelligent man and a man with a good sense of the big
picture...I'd go to the grave
defending that about him.

I think Obama's a good man, too....he's done nothing to show otherwise
(he strikes me as a bit naive, green and sometimes immature...but those
don't make a good
man bad...I think his approach would be dramatically different if he gave
himself another eight years
before making this bid, with added experience washing away some of the
unintentional arrogance & naiveté).

But back to Carter...I think the best he'll get from history is that he
was
a good man, a person of integrity. I don' think history will remember his
presidency
as an effective one. Granted, he got a raw deal.....and it \seems as
though
cards were purposely stacked to thwart his effectiveness. But, hell,
FDR
inherited a Depression....and seemed to
manage to be a mighty force. Carter didn't seem to inspire or instill a
lot
of confidence while he was in the office
(much of his greatness seems to have come since leaving that office).



Given the situation Carter inherited from Nixon having taken the
country off the Bretton Woods agreement I suppose I have a more
favorable opinion of him than most. Once he appointed Volker he was
going to lose. If Obama gets elected let's hope he has half that man's
courage.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: NASA PDF Mercury, Gemini, Apollo reports free online
    ... A history of Apollo launch facilities and operations ... Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference - Orloff, ... Civil Space Program; Volume 5; Exploring the Cosmos ... 50 Years at the NASA Dryden Flight Research ...
    (sci.space.history)
  • Re: Books on space program and moon landing
    ... For the history of the Soviet space program, it's hard to beat "Challenge To Apollo" by Asif Siddiqi, which is available as a free PDF download - although it takes a while to download, as it's a very big book: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20000088626_2000122281.pdf ... Other ones I enjoyed were "Korolev" by James Harford, which is the story of the head of the Soviet manned space program; "The Heavens And The Earth" by Walter A. McDougall which is the story behind the politics of early space exploration; and "Dragonfly" by Bryan Burrough about the Shuttle missions to the Mir space station. ... ....and if you are into the history of rockets and spaceflight in fact and fiction for the past couple of thousand years, Ron Miller's huge and profusely illustrated "The Dream Machines" which gives a year-by-year account of how the concept of spaceflight came about, and the machines intended to do it. ...
    (sci.space.history)
  • finding myself
    ... then trek out into the woods of history ... to find the vomit-causing ovum ... imbedded in the berlin wall ...
    (rec.arts.poems)
  • Re: Democratic Party may not be around much longer
    ... The Space Program has been described as the greatest public works project since the Great Pyramids.* However, unlike the Pyramids, the Space Program delivered and continues to deliver a myriad of technologies that we take for granted but which are in fact giant leaps in the history of technological progress. ...
    (alt.sports.basketball.nba.la-lakers)
  • Re: Nobody ever said you had to be a jeenyus to work for Bushco
    ... High School without learning about the Cuban Missile Crisis. ... Maybe some American History? ... And who cares about Hitler any more? ... And you expect every historian to care about every Russian ...
    (rec.sport.football.college)