Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The Carter Years

Remember the Carter Years? Oh I remember them.

Remember the gas lines? What was it called, rationing? Odd day, even day, the last digit on your license plate had to match for you to get gas. Then you had to wait in a long line. There were fights and stations actually ran out of gas. It really sucked if you had waited 3 or 4 hours, inching your car up the line just for them to run out and close. All that time wasted. I helped push some poor woman in line that ran out of gas waiting to fill up.

Remember high inflation? Though it started under Ford, nothing the Democrat Carter did seemed to work. I can remember it hitting a whopping 18%. That means if you wanted something that was worth $20 bucks, you better bring near $22.00. The rate for commodities was worse; I watched as bread went from 16 cents a loaf to almost $1.00. Gas at the pump went from 35 cents a gallon to 90 cents. And then Carter started adding taxes to make us more "independent" and gas went up over a $1.00, it has never returned below that level.

Remember how weak the dollar was back then? On my first trip to the med in 1976 we could trade one US dollar for 1600 Italian lire. On my last in 1979, it was 1 for 600, and it wasn't because things were that much better in Italy. It was just that bad in the U.S. of A. A lot of the weakness in the dollar was directly attributed to how the FED played with the lending rate. On a day to day basis they would dry up the money supply or change what they charged for overnight lending going from as little as 3% to 13% in one day. This wreaked havoc with banks and other lending intuitions, including those companies that floated credit cards. I remember credit card lending rates rose up to the mid-20% range, they too have not come back down.

Remember the jobless rate? I remember them claiming credit for new job creation for all them Job's when they started the DOE. Most of them having been in the DOD up till then, but the Carter Administration took it as a job creation.

Remember how Carter gutted the military: cancelling an aircraft carrier, cancelling the B-1 bomber program. He wanted to reduce the size of the entire military to "reflect the realities after Vietnam". We were a 'peace time' nation and he wanted a military to reflect that. I remember all the "swords into plowshares" discussion which was the first time I had heard that phrase or a variation thereof.

And then the Iran hostage affair. The actual invasion of a U.S. sovereign territory. And he did virtually nothing. We could have ended before it started all of our problems with Islamic fanaticism if he had even one ball, or a single vertebrae supporting his spine. But, No, he did nothing. And how many have paid for that since.

Now this very old ass-hat is trotted out in front of a camera to ply some deranged agenda and he obliges; if you oppose PresBO's health care agenda, you are a Racist.

He knows this because well, he is a Southerner and a Democrat you know. Those guys can spot racists a mile away.

Why hell, they invented racism down there in the South. Let's see, the KKK was founded by a Democrat Southerner that was not pleased with having lost the Civil War. Jim Crowe laws were all instituted by Southern States controlled by Democrat legislatures and Democrat Governors. And segregation was mainly, if not only a Southern thing.

So, you see, Southerners are uniquely qualified to detect racism. And Jimmy the good for nothing Peanut Farmer is seeing it all around our country now.

I have never figured out why the Blacks and Hispanic's in this country gravitate to this party. With its history of using minorities to simply get votes, they have oppressed minorities and kept them under the jack-boot for too long. I heard today something especially telling. The quote was from David Horiwitz and he said: "The progressive liberal democrats have always used black people as their human shields in politics." He is so right.

Makes me sick. Is there not an island we can send all these tired old used up Politicians too! Oh yeah, that's right we have terrorists down there in Gitmo.

Maybe we could swap with them!!

BT: Jimmy T sends.

2 comments:

Buck said...

The Carter era inflation did one good thing for me... I had an Oregon VA loan on my first house, assumable by anyone at 5%. I sold the house in 1980 at full asking price with no dickering, simply because of that assumable loan. Conventional mortgages were somewhere around 12 ~14%... at the time, if you could qualify.

Other than that... HARD times. We'll probably be seeing similar in three to five years, given the rate The One is spending our money.

Oh, yeah... one more thing: There ain't NO bigger asshat in these United States than Jimmuh. None.

JimmyT said...

Buck, yeah that Jimmy Carter, there should be some way to have the Peace Prize revoked!!

BT: Jimmy T sends.