<p>I remember President Carter…I voted for him. Then, later, I regretted it. Mrs p2n was correct back then - she voted for Ford.</p>
<p>Please - no more Carters.</p>
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<p>…or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the Soviets got wind of the US covert plan to incite rebellion in Cuba and overthrow Castro?</p>
<p>[Operation</a> Mongoose](<a href=“http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/ops/mongoose.htm]Operation”>Operation Mongoose)</p>
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<p>I couldn’t agree with this more. Believe it or not, I have as many misgivings about McCain as I do about Obama.</p>
<p>I am actually not worried. I will vote for McCain…he wins…great…he loses oh well! </p>
<p>The people will speak, they will vote and we will all have a new president in January. </p>
<p>I definetly have my feelings about who I want to see in the office, but it doesn’t mean I won’t respect who is in office!</p>
<p>Marite…in a nutshell where I disagreed with you is that people will question patriotism, and it is naive to believe that supporters for any party won’t warp words to make it fit their stance. That is why I said the comment of speech. I think it is hard, especially for this Polish girl to express opinions, without a direct communication to expound upon.</p>
<p>I don’t recall that Reagan had a lot of skeletons in his closet, either, other than being divorced. Not that I want any more Reagans.</p>
<p>Didn’t Jimmy spend alot of time explaining Billy…I believe my brother still has a 6 pack of un-opened Billy Beer…keep going further back.</p>
<p>Ford, had Betty
Nixon…well he had himself
LBJ…holding the dog by his ears
Kennedy…Marilyn</p>
<p>I think we have to go back to Eisenhower</p>
<p>Nope - Eisenhower had Kay Summersby. Keep going…</p>
<p>Fussing with Castro’s Communist regime in Operation Mongoose would be little motivation to the pragmatic Soviets, who would have sacrificed the Cuban Communist “fellow travelers” in a second if it met Soviet strategic policy goals.</p>
<p>I see the real motivation for the Soviet basing of missiles in Cuba was perceived weakness by the Soviets of the U.S. Administration and that the Soviets were dying to counter U.S. Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey.</p>
<p>At this point, we’re talking about candidates, not presidents, and there have been plenty of candidates without sexual skeletons (nalthough it isn’t something I care about that much). Dukakis was a lot closer to Obama than to McCain when it came to his personal life. I don’t think Mondale was much of a ladykiller, either.</p>
<p>“Didn’t Jimmy spend alot of time explaining Billy…I believe my brother still has a 6 pack of un-opened Billy Beer…keep going further back.”</p>
<p>We can’t control how our brothers, sisters, spouses, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and ministers behave. But we can control what we ourselves do. If you want someone that has never slept with another, never done illegal drugs, never divorced, never drinks to excess, was a virgin before marriage, etc., Carter would be your man. That’s the image that I had.</p>
<p>I don’t know that much about Ford or LBJ - did they pass the tests above?</p>
<p>Does that make for the best President? Perhaps not.</p>
<p>How is a brother a skeleton in a closet? One’s brother in no way reflects anything about one’s own character.</p>
<p>Billy was a big thorn…rest his soul</p>
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<p>Okay I am not a math genius, but I think 220K 30 yrs ago would be = to millions today. Can you imagine Dorothy Bush getting that amount from Yemen. or Chelsea Clinton accepting it from Venezuela?</p>
<p>I do agree Jimmy or any other president shouldn’t be held accountable, but you would hope that your brother has enough respect for you that they wouldn’t peddle beer on your name. </p>
<p>I was too young to vote for Jimmy, but I remember my mother selling her gold jewelry b/c gas prices, mtg rates and stagflation were so high that as a divorced single mom she had no recourse.</p>
<p>As far as Dukakis, Kitty hurt him when she had her stomach pumped for ingesting rubbing alcohol…the Willie Horton, and the tank issue did also, but her alcohol problem was a factor too.</p>
<p>I am sure Bush will come as a close second for the worse President, but Jimmy is statistically number 1…can we all say 18% mtg rates, gas prices with inflation are equal, no respect/fear from Russia or Iran. Under Carter we were not a super power…boycotting the Olympics made Russia re-think their Afghanistan policy</p>
<p>If not for Jimmy Carter, who’s to say what the middle East would look like now. What our relations with Iran would be, whether Iran would be the terrorist state that it is.</p>
<p>“can we all say 18% mtg rates, gas prices with inflation are equal”</p>
<p>What was wrong with 18% mortgage rates? We should have those now to kill speculative excess and inflation and get people back to thinking about working and saving instead of trading paper and houses to live off of.</p>
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<p>…and if the CIA and British intelligence hadn’t overthrown the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran back in 1953, then perhaps Iran wouldn’t have been exposed to the tyranny of the Shah’s Peacock Throne, which ultimately led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.</p>
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<p>As a realtor a part of me is with you. Yet, the reality is I have sold many homes to people who are A paper and would never have the amount needed to buy with 20% down which was the norm in the 80s, now we have 5%.</p>
<p>Here’s an example of A paper 680+ credit score</p>
<p>Carter:
20% down on 200K mtg = 40K out of pocket
18% mtg, add taxes and insurance
PMT $3040</p>
<p>Bush
5% down on 200K mtg = 10K out of pocket
6% mtg, add taxes and insurance
PMT $1140</p>
<p>Take the avg home price right now in a suburban metropolitan area of 500K…Carter mtg @7500 pm, Bush @2400.</p>
<p>IF you think the housing market is bad now, can you imagine if banks went back to 20% down…the economy would be in a recession!</p>
<p>“As a realtor a part of me is with you. Yet, the reality is I have sold many homes to people who are A paper and would never have the amount needed to buy with 20% down which was the norm in the 80s, now we have 5%.”</p>
<p>How do you know? If we had interest rates at 18%, housing prices would fall much more rapidly to a point where it would be affordable while prospective buyers would be saving up more of a down payment and getting high rates of returns on those savings.</p>
<p>I heard that the money supply is rising about 17% a year (on Jim Pupluva’s show). We should have interest rates at 17%+5% to compensate savers for inflation. Instead, all the central bankers have done since the mid-1990s is inflate, inflate, inflate.</p>
<p>Here’s an example of A paper 680+ credit score</p>
<p>Carter:
20% down on 200K mtg = 40K out of pocket
18% mtg, add taxes and insurance
PMT $3040</p>
<p>Bush
5% down on 200K mtg = 10K out of pocket
6% mtg, add taxes and insurance
PMT $1140</p>
<p>Take the avg home price right now in a suburban metropolitan area of 500K…Carter mtg @7500 pm, Bush @2400.</p>
<p>IF you think the housing market is bad now, can you imagine if banks went back to 20% down…the economy would be in a recession!"</p>
<p>The market is not bad now. Houses are way overpriced relative to income and savings. We went through the recession in the 1980s and it set the stages for the recovery of the 1990s.</p>
<p>How many of Obama’s “friends” and/or “surrogates” does he have to “disavow” before we start to catch on that the man has no friend but his own naked ambition? Who are his real friends anyway? People that he is not willing to throw under the bus at the drop of a hat? Does he have any?</p>
<p>McCain has disavowed a few of his friends, too. That’s par for the course for politicians.</p>
<p>Which ones? (I’m really not familiar with these instances.)</p>
<p>^ His first wife? That is a pretty significant one!</p>