Who was the worst president of the past fifty years?

Actually... the "acceptable" term for black people in those times was "Negro(es)" not the n-word. The n-word has always been perceived as a racist term. LBJ was a racist. That's the difference.

 

Bush is worse hands down!!

He got us into a costly was in the wrong country, used the credit card to pay for it, and his ignorance about the economy made the recovery much worse. Not to to forget the lovely "mission accomplished" speech he gave to the troops!

 

As a result of recent events and strategies over the last couple weeks, plus those now taking shape which promises to be nothing less than a royal lie-fest extraordinaire, I'd like to change my vote to Barack Obama.

 

But George Bush did NOT squander his party's position and was re-elected to a second term, like it or not, hew was neither right nor left buy the new "Overton Window" candidate...

Now, compare that to Jimmy Carter, who, after having come from rural south obscurity [when was the last Southern president elected before him? Truman's Missouri being technically a "mid west state"] squandered not only his presidency, the party's chances for twelve long years, the nation's pride and hope, the military, especially the Navy.

Carter "inherited" the hatred the world had for his opponents, a bragging, proud, war mongering, arrogant right wing with a string of criminal activities behind them, claims Nixon was behind the Kennedy assassination and lost in a land slide to an aging actor who had barely squeaked into the nomination by beating Carter's hand chosen appointee to head the CIA, George Bush senior. People both Rep and Dem forget Reagan was 72, the oldest presidential candidate in history [if I am not mistaken] and trailed "hopelessly in the poles until the very closing days on the campaign, but ended up surrendering the most significant majority in modern history..

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1980

Now that's just his political record, which you singled out...

Then there's "stagflation" a word had to be invented for how bad he screwed up the country...

The "Foreign Policy" of that WHACK JOB Zbignew Brzinski...

American troops let to rot in an insane and badly planned rescue attempt of the hostages...

And there was the 400+ days those Americans had to suffer torture while that prick played with the White House tennis courts.,...

His "New South" liberal bull(*)(*)(*)(*) when he'd been screwing his black contract farmers for decades....

He may have redeemed himself - he's had a lot of years out of office to make new friends - but what he did to the nation's soul in those years, what it felt like for me, half American and half Canadian and see that little old Canada, without any military of its own at the time, risked and ultimately destroyed for all time its relations with Iran so hide and protect a handful of American diplomats....

He brought shame and humiliation on the country from without, weakened her, I believe, sufficiently that later terrorists would be emboldened, and cause the most suffering on the American people of any president since the Great Depression...

 

Ok, believe what you want, but there isn't any real evidence that LBJ ever spoke what you quoted, and you've looked.

People change, and politicians do what it takes to get elected, and they try to enact policy that not always conforms to their public statements, designed to appeal to a voting public.
Moreover you are using recordings of Johnson dealing with people out of the public eye, up close and personal, just the two of them, on the phone.
There is a way of talking to people one on one that is different from what you'd say at a podium or even at a dinner table, especially when you are working them.
Johnson was a master manipulator, you can't take anything out of context and represent it anything but a snippet taken out of context, it doesn't prove anything.
What we do know about LBJ is that he got an amazing amount of Civil Rights legislation passed.

 

All of the above were roughly as horrible on policy, both constitutionally and from my perspective. The most legislatively active of them was Johnson, so I went with him, but a case could easily be made for

• Nixon - departing from gold standard, war on drugs, EPA, horrible abuses of executive power that still haunt the US today.
• Reagan - pushed tax cuts then significantly upped government spending and went back on his promise, transgressed Congress' power over appropriations by ignoring their refusal of funds for a campaign in Nicaragua and selling arms to state enemies, all to fund a conflict not approved by Congress in a declaration of war - in doing so violated the reason you guys went to revolution in the first place - no taxation should go on without representation in the people's body.
• George W. Bush - Patriot Act, significant increase in Middle East presence, vastly overreacted to 9/11 by basically giving into the terrorists and compromising American liberty. Passed ridiculous bank bailouts that wouldn't have been needed if it wasn't for the moral hazard that is the Federal Reserve system, etc.

Carter was only marginally better because he had little ability (or, to his credit, desire) to expand executive power. You have to go back to Coolidge to find a decent President.

 

Coolidge? He put the makings of the financial collapse in place, that brought on the Great Depression.....

 

I have to say LBJ and not for the comments dubiously credited to him but for Vietnam. What a cluster-(*)(*)(*)(*) that was! Unwanted, unwarranted, micromanaged, mismanaged and one of the biggest blights on American foreign policy. It took decades for us to recover and it got Tricky Dick into office. Oh course my second place choice is Dubya. In 7 years, the man managed to turn world opinion of us from sympathy to hatred. That was quite a feat.

 

I had to laugh at this one even though Calvin Coolidge is outside of the scope of the poll. Like former President George W Bush that was at the helm when the US economy collapsed in 2008 President Coolidge was also a Republican. The Great Depression and the Great Recession were both brought on by Republican administrations and left to the Democrats to fix.

 

A little stretching of the truth here.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars have cost about $1.5 trillion (it will continue to go up in the future) that was all paid for with deficit spending under the Bush Administration.

We were "thrown out of Iraq" because of atrocities committed with Bush was the Commander In Chef and the Iraqis refused to grant immunity from crimes any longer when Obama became the President.

The Bush tax policies resulted in the beginning of the decline in the "real wages" in America that declined significantly after the economic collapse of the economy in 2008.

The Great Recession is the reason behind why welfare spending has increased dramatically. The criteria for welfare didn't fundamentally change where we could blame it on Obama. Instead the number of people living in poverty or near poverty has increased dramatically since 2008 and that has swollen the welfare roles increasing costs dramatically.

Of all professions in the United States the only one showing significant gains is the medical profession. Job increases have been averaging about 21% per year as I recall while all other sectors are at about 4%. "Obamacare" is actually generating jobs in our economy and the medical services professions account for 17% of our total economy. There is no actual evidence that any jobs have been lost because of "Obamacare" that I'm aware of.

The real "fix" for the economy is to create fair taxation which would transfer the tax burden from the workers to wealthy investors. Currently wealthy investors pay less than 1/2 the tax rates on comparable income when compared to the workers in America. The economy grows by consumption, not investments in secondary stock markets, and the poor and middle class spend a much greater percentage of their income on consumption than the wealthy. Unfortunately neither Democrats or Republicans seem to acknowledge the fact that being able to produce something when there are no customers doesn't do anything for the economy.

 

Making up memories is fun, isn't it? Who needs the mainstream media, when we have you to remind us of a false history?

 

I would like to see actual evidence that anything I stated is false.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars, both of which were unnecessary, have rung up at total cost of $1.5 trillion so far, they were both funded under President Bush with "emergency spending measures" that were "off-budget" while Bush ran up the national debt by roughly $5 trillion.

The reason the US left Iraq was because the Iraqi government refused to continue to grant immunity from prosecution to the United States for crimes committed by members of the US military and US contractors in Iraq. Iraq wanted the authority to prosecute those that violated the laws of Iraq in Iraqi court rooms. This was unacceptable to President Bush as well as President Obama. The reason was that crimes were being committed that violated Iraqi criminal laws but went unprosecuted by the US government. For example the documented murder of Iraqi citizens by "Blackwater" never lead to criminal prosecutions under the Bush administration.

There have fundamentally be no changes to the "qualification" criteria for welfare under the Obama Administration. The reason more people are receiving assistance is because more people meet the criteria that provides the assistance. The Recession is the reason that more people qualify and not any changes to the criteria for assistance.

There is no evidence of any jobs actually being lost because of "Obamacare" in the United States. There is extensive evidence of an increase in employment in the health services sector because more people will be able to receive the health care services they require.

Finally the economy is driven by consumption and low to middle income workers spend a much higher percentage of their income on consumption than the wealthy. Investors pay less than 1/2 of the tax rates than working Americans.

For example a working family with a net income of about $75,000/yr is in a 15% income tax bracket and also pays 15.3% in FICA/Payroll/Self-employment taxes on their gross income/profits. An investor with $75,000/yr in net income pays zero taxes under the Capital Gains laws and doesn't pay any FICA/Payroll/ Self-employment taxes.

Basically the "worker" has a 30% tax burden while the investor has a 0% tax burden on the identical income.

So instead of simply making unsupported opinion statements try to dispute the facts that are presented.

 

I would have to say Obama. Under Obama this country is broken. No other president on that list presided over a broken country, and its been that way since day one. Our economic recovery is virtually non-existent, our unemployment rate is staggering, and very few people are better off today than before he got there...

 

The only thing true about your post is that it is the typical anti-American rant heard from the left. America bad, socialism good blah blah blah. The left are constantly calling republicans racists and haters but all you have to do is look at the above post to see the anti-American hate, hate the military, hate the rich blah blah blah.

 

These polls only reflect the make up of the board (if that) which not surprisingly, leans fairly heavily conservative.

 

A rather ignorant opinion concerning my personal opinions and the facts.

I have always supported the ideals upon which America was founded. I have also objected to government policies and actions that violate those ideals. As Americans it is our personal responsibility to condemn our government when it violates the ideals upon which America was founded and whenever it engages in unconstitutional actions.

I'm also a Vietnam War Veteran that has served his time. I oppose the disrespect of our members of government that send our troops off to foreign wars that have absolutely nothing to do with defending the United States from foreign attacks and invasions. In Article I Section 8 it clearly establishes the role of our military to provide for the common Defense of the United States and attacking countries like N Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama and other countries that never had any intention of ever attacking the United States (except in defense of their own nation from a US attack) is an abuse of the US military. Foreign wars of US imperialism is not authorized by the US Constitution. Sadly, our Congress is so disrespectful of the US military that it hasn't even passed a single Joint Declaration of War since WW II.

The United States economy is based upon crony capitalism and not socialism. The US government does not own the means of production or the distribution of goods and services. Claiming that the Democrats are attempting to impose socialism reflects compete ignorance as to what socialism really is. My problem is that the Democrats (and Republicans) continue to support crony capitalism and not that there is any threat of socialism being imposed in the United States.

There was a complete failure in the above post do dispute any of the statements that I made because they can't be disputed. They are fact for which I have ample sources to document and have documented each and every one of them previously. Instead the "rebuttal" reflected nothing but uninformed opinion.

 

Nixon didn't abuse his power that much, other than the Watergate scandal.

 

Barry Obama has diminished the office to a depth that even Jimmah Carturd couldn't sink to. "Ahm a black man so I kin dos as I dos and nobody has bettah question mah agenda". It's hard to watch this manchild brat fumble around in our house.

 

It's always so enlightening to see the quality of discourse coming from our right wing friends. It explains a lot.

 

I voted for Barack Obama as worst. But I find it hilarious that Bill Clinton has NO VOTES for worst. This is the President who sold the technology for multiple nuclear warheads to china. (A technology that they were decades away from achieving). In doing so, Clinton placed the security of America in the most danger of any past president. And put the money for that information straight into his personal account.

 

January 2009

Job loss: Worst in 34 years
Employers slashed 598,000 more jobs in January [2009] as unemployment rate climbed to 7.6%.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Employers slashed another 598,000 jobs off of U.S. payrolls in January, taking the unemployment rate up to 7.6%, according to the latest government reading on the nation's battered labor market.

The latest job loss is the worst since December 1974, and brings job losses to 1.8 million in just the last three months, or half of the 3.6 million jobs that have been lost since the beginning of 2008.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/06/news/economy/jobs_january/index.htm

Market players were also disappointed by reports that U.S. home prices fell 8.7% year-over-year in November, U.S. housing starts fell 15.5% in December, and weekly initial jobless claims rose 62,000 to 589,000.
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/jan2009/pi20090122_192905.htm

On Wednesday, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average finished with a loss of 248.42 points, or 2.94%, to 8,200[/B].

http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/jan2009/pi20090114_103250.htm

598,000 Jobs Shed In Brutal January
Unemployment Hits 7.6% as Downturn Picks Up Steam

The need for progress on those fronts seemed more important than ever yesterday, as the Labor Department announced that conditions worsened more than expected last month. The nation's employers shed 598,000 jobs, the most since 1974, driving the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent from 7.2 percent. If the jobless rate keeps rising at the pace it has for the past two months, it will hit double digits in summer and reach its highest rate since the Great Depression by the fall.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR2009020601156.html

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: FOURTH QUARTER 2008 (PRELIMINARY)
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 6.2 [later revised to 8.9] percent in the fourth quarter of 2008[/B], (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to preliminary estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2009/pdf/gdp408p.pdf

Continued Unemployment Claims at Record High
In the week ending Jan. 24, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 588,000, an increase of 3,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 585,000.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/01/continued-unemployment-claims-at-record.html[/QUOTE]


Yep. I'm sure most folks really miss those days before Obama took office.

 

Obama is the worst of the worst...And will be for the next 50years

 

Yep. I'm sure most folks really miss those days before Obama took office.[/QUOTE]

Only one of the Bush years sucked, every one of the Obama years has since sucked...

 

Nonsense...no worse President than Bush II...EVER. That bar has been set and cemented for now and in the future. No one can possibly equal the damage that man did to this country.

 

Are you just trying to rattle my chain? Bush was a 100 times better then Obama.. Just wait 2 more years I hope we can save the US from the mess Obama will leave.