April 06, 2025
Tariffying
more...
OK. I'm BACK!
This is the post where I (like everyone else on the internet at the moment) am required to be an expert on international trade, monetary policy, profit margins, comparative tax and tariff structures between economies as well as between cultures that have significant but sometimes non-intuitive differences, U.S. national industrial policy, to what extent the former should or should not reflect a policy of autarky, Canadian public opinion and how it's goals differ from the actual, as opposed to the stated goals of the Laurentian consensus, U.S. agricultural exports, the effects on both global hunger as well as the viability of American farmers that are likely to result from its curtailment, the realistic potential for industrial scale recourse extraction in CONUS, the environmental cost-benefit of the same, the United States' textile industry, the relative differences and severity between inflation that is due to product scarcity and that that is caused by overprinting of fiat currency, the carbon footprints produced by burning various models of Tesla vehicles, how fast new businesses and infrastructure might be built in the U.S., the political will of several other countries, the domestic political costs those other country's governments will incur regarding any trade concessions they might or might not make, the effect of economic tensions between potential allies in a time of global instability, and the effects of U.S. excise taxes upon penguins.
Sadly, unlike every other person on the internet right now, I have shameful gaps in my knowledge of many of those topics.
My qualifications are that I possess a degree in history, am a nerd, have a website and internet access so I can do a bit of research via mostly secondary and tertiary sources. Research Gate provides numerous peer reviewed papers on economic policy regarding aspects of the current topic which I am not particularly qualified to assess, and none on the current topic itself as it is a developing story.
So:
I'm gonna wing it.
I'm not gonna lie.
At the moment, my pucker factor is high.
I'm a conservative. I've been one all my life, never having gone through a liberal phase as such. (That's what growing up in the '70s will do to you. ) As such I have always been generally opposed to tariffs. Part of this was just tribal, as the left always extolled the virtues of tariffs. However, there is both a practical and a historic basis for my tariff skepticism, quite apart from the ideological theorizing of the Chicago School of Economics.
The practical opposition is mostly anecdotal and comes from my experiences as a child growing up in the 1970's and as a teenager in the 80s. U.S cars were absolute crap. Unreliable, and prone to astonishing rates of rust. My folks, who lived in the rural, costal southeast purchased numerous vehicles which rusted out with impressive alacrity*. All that changed when they got a Toyota Corolla. It ran reliably right up until my dad was attacked by a vicious tree which completely totaled the car, and yet it saved my dad's life. The next car served the family for 15 years, eventually becoming my first car until, at age 19, I was attacked by a vicious tree, while minding my own business at 70mph in a rainstorm. (My family has a fraught history with foliage). Anyway, I was uninjured. My Father also got a superb light truck, an Isuzu Pup diesel, which despite having been submerged twice in seawater (hurricane storm surges, literally attacks by vicious water) immense wear and tear, 2 collisions and a need to make spare parts from scratch is still serving my dad 40 years later, albeit intermittently and with some of it's metal structure replaced by lumber. The reason for this is not only because of the remarkable durability of 'Woody' but because tariff restrictions put in place since the 1980's due to the Japanese making light trucks of vastly superior quality to their American counterparts. The result of those restrictions which included a 25% tax on imported trucks, raised all the prices by 25% and made it exceedingly hard and expensive to get a good light truck.
These restrictions left a particularly bad taste in my mouth because the furor over Japanese Imports and demands for tariffs were hand in hand with grotesque racism aimed at the Japanese (our allies at the time in the existential struggle that was the cold war.) I grew up in the south in the 70's and '80s and was quite aware of how bad racism could be, and the disgusting hate directed at Asians during the 80's and into the '90s was quite the eye opener. I witnessed it first hand during my early years at university, when a very liberal host family who gave room and board to exchange students ( and included a U.A.W. member) reacted with horror and verbal abuse to receiving a Japanese exchange student. They kicked him out on the street and I was tasked with getting him assistance...that was a story in itself, but it cemented in my mind that the tariffs touted as "PWOTKTIN' DA GOOD PAYIN' UUNOION JOBZSEZ" were little more than payoffs to resentful lazy shithead racists annoyed they had to compete with folks possessing work ethics.
These observations are entirely anecdotal as well as being based on a control group of one racist shithead, so they lack academic rigor and any fairness to the rank and file of US autoworkers, but the sentiments that I witnessed were the same ones that led to the murder of Vincent Chin.
A more relevant and rigorous reason for concern at Trump's tariffs than the gut feeling of an aging redneck is the historical precedent of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which was passed in the closing years of the Hoover administration and helped the shaky economy and stock market crash of 1929 to balloon into a devastating worldwide economic crisis. This is well documented and a cause for considerable concern.
However:
Up until this year Democrats and those on the left were at least giving lip service to the need for tariffs. They suddenly changed their tune because Trump, very much a '90s Democrat, is pushing a '90s Democrat policy, thus that policy must be cast aside.
There's also that moral issue I noted earlier about lazy people resenting people with a work ethic. The Japanese are hard for Americans to grok because of their very different culture, but the tariff issues in the 1980's could be understood as American unions and rather complascent corporations panicking because hard working workers and companies overseas had beat them at their own game fair and square. Those tariffs were AND ARE STILL punishing American consumers not in the specific industries being afforded protection.
However, what happened in the 90s was not due to worker laziness or corporate ineptitude. It was a policy by Democrats to bypass earlier restrictions intended to protect the nations defense industrial base. This seems to be in return for dumptrucks full of cash from corporate boards who were very happy to reap the benefits of "free trade" if they did not have to pay U.S. wages. It should be remembered here that the Chinese workers, to give one example, are not simply working harder and better. They are often slaves, and when not are paid exceedingly little, being residents of an increasingly totalitarian state. Besides the moral atrocity that using such labor represents, local (American) workers cannot possibly compete with such practices.
Another factor is that other countries already have pretty impressive tariffs on U.S. goods. The much ballyhooed 241% Canadian Tariff on U.S. dairy is, while inconsistent & complex, a very real thing. This and similar tariffs in Europe are a hold over from the Cold War and the Marshall Plan, when the U.S. helped rebuild the world after WW2 and bribed them with favorable trade deals in exchange for not going wobbly while we faced down a murderous empire that said it dedicated itself to world peace, but defined peace as an absence of people on the planet not under it's own ideology....and had 30,000+ nuclear warheads pointed at us.
That's not the case anymore.
And yet the foreign tariffs on U.S. exports persist.
The U.S. industrial plant has been hollowed out. This is in part due to trends that began with the healthy competition that resulted from the Europeans recovering from their self-immolation in the 40s as well as the liberation of their colonies around the world, but it is also due to policies and tolerance of policies that have meant that the U.S. has been competing on a completely unfair playing field.
National security demands that we have the ability to make our kit here and economic prosperity requires jobs that are in our country.
But the increasingly perilous international situation requires allies, and those allies, who have always looked at us with a resentful sneer now see their rice bowls (that have become THE NORM FOR THEM) being overturned. If other countries politicos agree to low reciprocal tariffs as Trump is demanding, then the political pushback to the politicians from the constituencies their unfair and abusive tariffs protect is likely to be not just hurtful at election time, but terrifyingly kinetic.
Trump is, as Churchill once said of J.F. Dulles, a bull who helpfully provides his own China shop. His actions on these tariffs is upending the world order and has the potential to plunge the planet into an economic disaster.
His constituencies are cheering, as the post WW2 order has, especially since the neo-lib ascendency after the Cold War it was intended for, devastated their lives. This is partly due to an impressive avariciousness of our ruling class but also, a fairly new but undeniable oikophobic contempt for those not of the gentry classes by many of our policy makers, captains of industry and thought leaders. Thus Trump's supporters do not put much stock in their warnings, which, however well founded they may be, are ultimately self serving pleas by their tormentors.
On the other hand IF (a big if) other countries play ball, then Trump's actions might massively revitalize the U.S. economy, provide jobs, enhance national defense, and, potentially, bring about the worldwide prosperity that actual free trade brings.
A Trump victory might also have some downward pressure on prices, as trade restrictions are lifted, though that is not likely to in any way compensate for the near to mid term inflationary pressures that a massive re-industrialization is going to entail.
To sum up, I am cautiously hopeful, but very, VERY concerned. There are many ways this can go sideways to very bad outcomes, and a few that will be wonderful....IF some pretty amazingly unlikely historical bank-shots happen.
We live in interesting times.
As noted above my qualifications to opine on this matter are....slim. So here are a few people who might, or might not be better positioned to make an informed observation.
Link here. I...have no idea what that means.
Bill Ackman has thoughts: Somewhat pollyannish thoughts in my opinion, but thoughts. (and his expertise is in this area)
.
@VDHanson
makes a compelling case for the
@realDonaldTrump
tariff strategy, but gets one issue incorrect. He describes the Trump tariffs as reciprocal and proportional to those other nations have assessed on us.
In actuality, the Trump tariffs were set at levels substantially above, and in many cases, at a multiple of the counterparty country’s tariff levels.
Initially, the market responded favorably, up more than one percent when Trump referred to ‘reciprocal tariffs’ in his Rose Garden speech. It was only when he put up a chart showing the actual tariffs that the markets plunged.
We can divine from this response that market participants are supportive of the administration using tariffs as a tool to lower the asymmetrical tariffs of our trading partners, but are highly concerned with tariff levels set well in excess of a corresponding country’s levels.
So why did Trump take this approach?
The answer goes back to ‘The Art of the Deal.’ Trump’s negotiating style is to ask for the moon and then settle somewhere in between. It has worked well for him in the past so he is using the same approach here.
The market’s response is due to the fear that if this strategy fails and the tariffs stay in place, they will plunge our economy into a recession. And we don’t need to wait for failure as it doesn’t take long for a high degree of uncertainty to cause economic activity to slow.
Press reports today have said that all deals are now on hold. This is not surprising. Capitalism is a confidence game. Uncertainty is the enemy of business confidence.
The good news is that a number of countries have already approached the negotiating table to make tariff deals, which suggests that Trump’s strategy is beginning to work. Whether this is enough to settle markets next week is unknowable, but we will find out soon.
The idea that Wall Street and investors are opposed to the President’s efforts to bring back our industrial base by leveling the tariff playing field is false. Our trading partners have taken advantage of us for decades after tariffs were no longer needed to help them rebuild their economies after WWII.
The market is simply responding to Trump’s shock and awe negotiating strategy and factoring in some probability that it will fail or otherwise lead to an extended period of uncertainty that will sink us into a recession.
The market decline has been compounded by losses incurred at so-called pod shops and other highly levered market participants that have been forced to liquidate positions as markets have declined.
Stocks of even the best companies are now trading at the cheapest valuations we have seen since Covid. If the President makes continued progress on tariff deals, uncertainty will be reduced, and the market will begin to recover.
As more countries come to the table, those that have held out or have reciprocated with higher tariffs will have growing concerns about being left behind. This should cause more countries to negotiate deals until we reach a tipping point where it is clear that the strategy will succeed. When this occurs, stocks will soar.
Trump’s strategy is not without risk, but I wouldn’t bet against him. The more that markets support the President and his strategy, the higher the probability that he succeeds, so a stable hand on the trading wheel is a patriotic one.
An important characteristic of a great leader is a willingness to change course when the facts change or when the initial strategy is not working. We have seen Trump do this before. Two days in, however, it is much too early to form a view about his tariff strategy.
Trump cares enormously about our economy and the stock market as a measure of his performance. If the current strategy works, he will continue to execute on it. If it needs to be tweaked or changed, I expect he will make the necessary changes. Based on the early read, his strategy appears to be working.
Let’s help him succeed. It’s the least we can do.
Over at American Greatness they have some defense of the ethics of Trump's move. Less on the repercussions.
Remember the brief mention above of "tearing the system down?" Well, Nick Freitas and crew have dome disquisitions on the matter.
Dad Saves America does a play by play of Trump's speech, and has analysis and criticism.
Over at Money and Macro, they have a more sanguine take... That somewhat comports with Freitas's stream above.
Me?
I don't know.
But I think we're in for a ride.
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March 17, 2025
A Different Perspective on the Holiday
"...and THAT'S why our ancestors left Ireland for America"
Artist Unknown
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March 15, 2025
Thoughts on The Mahmoud Khalil Mess
Mahmoud Khalil is a waste of skin that can be better utilized by burn victims.
But so were those other NAZIs in Skokie 48 years ago.
The fact that he has so many allies amongst our most educated, allies who are indisputably citizens and canNOT (and should not) be exiled for mere words is a pretty horrific development that presents a far more thorny issue for our society that this specific people shaped colostomy bag does.
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March 11, 2025
In Lieu of Content Here Are Some Links.
Somewhat related: Neo on the only recently appreciated excellent state of American health.
A Break from Politics and a look at a hopeful future. Isaac Arthur on Aldrin Cyclers:
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Stream Cancelled.
I've had an IRL issue. (Hopefully it's minor)
Tonight's stream is cancelled.
I will be back by Friday if not before as I have a court date in my home town then.
Everyone stay safe.
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March 03, 2025
I'm out of the Hospital and GOING TO SPAAAAACE! (Virtually)
Join us on the Twitch Channel at 6pm EST 11pm UTC* for a stream that we will begin with fireworks as we tune into the 8th launch of the Starship space transportation system. This rocket, improved and enlarged after the fiery pyrotechnic fun of the last attempt is the largest rocket ever made and, IF successful, will bring a true space age to humanity in the next few years. Grab a drink and a snack and join the conversation in chat as we watch the launch. Find out in real time if this launch results in engineering history or it results again in ***SPLODIES***!
* Yeah I've changed the time! this is the current estimate as the launch looks to be 30 min after stream start.
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March 01, 2025
Join us tonight at 9pmEST /2am UTC over on my Twitch channel for this year's first trek into the obscure vaults of THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. Unlike our previous forays into this realm, this film is not in the public domain because of its age nor is its obscurity due to it being a silent classic. This film is in the public domain because its so, bone crushingly, soul-rendingly awful that no copyright holder wants to get its cooties on them. DO YOU DARE ENDURE THE GIANT GILA MONSTER!?
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February 02, 2025
"Political"
When I was in my twenties, most of my friends were lefties. I was not, but, the past is a different place, and it may astonish some of you that there was a time when people with vastly different viewpoints could actually be friends.
While I thought that some of their views were naive, I had a lot of respect for their (stated) tolerance and commitment to free speech. Like most of my fellow righties, my disagreements were generally in detail rather than principle (ie: porn should be legal, but kept away from kids, genuine national security secrets should remain secret).
One thing that there was NO apparent disagreement on WHATSOEVER was the Holocaust.
It was bad.
It was almost unimaginable evil.
It was example #1 of "Where we don't want to end up".
It was NOT a political question, because there was no debate over its utter wrongness.
The only debate about this stain upon humanity was which political mindset was more likely to result in such atrocity. I would point out the resentment of success inherent in leftism, the dehumanization inherent in the large bureaucracies favored by left of center thought leaders, and written examples like Marx's own ON THE JEWISH QUESTION. Or any number of speeches by a failed Austrian artist that, if the antisemitic bile were removed, would be very well received by left of center ideologs.
The other side of the debate consisted mainly of "Antisemitism is only right wing LOL. Everybody knows that."
There were, of course limits to tolerance. Several people in my circle of friends got enraged when one of the people whose house we used to gather at decided to keep a Kosher home, with the attendant restrictions on what snacks could be consumed. The responses of several of my lefty friends to this imposition upon what they could bring into another person's house, were phrases and rants that would get any right of center person ostracized as a NAZI. Bitter mutterings about "pushy jews" and other, less savory things. This shocked, but did not alarm me because I was a stupid 20-something, these guys and gals were my friends, and after all, whatever idiocies there might be in their political philosophy, they came from a combination of naivete' and an excessive fixation on niceness for its own sake. So, I blew it off as ironic edgy humor. 'Cause I was a stupid 20-something.
The one thing that was NOT in question was that the Holocaust was bad. That was not up for discussion. It was not a debate. Therefore it was not political.
Fast forward through 30 years of lefties increasingly going 'mask off' and we come to THIS.
The National Holocaust Museum (NHM) has been denied permission to run an exhibition in Westminster Hall on the grounds that it was too political.
What is political about the fact that killing 6 million folks because of their immutable characteristics is a horrid outcome that we do not want to repeat? What is political about pointing out that whenever politicos start singling out Jews, that dark times are a' commin'? What is political about holding a memorial to the victims of a horrific and preventable atrocity?
What makes it political, is that in the dystopian miasma of current year discourse, such facts are up for debate.
In the U.K. this might be explained away by the fact that they have unwisely imported a myriad of new voters who subscribe to 7th century viewpoints. But that is far too kind to the decision makers who made this policy, and far too comforting to those who say "It can't happen here".
We saw this in my own country with the campus protests celebrating the October 7th butchery. (Some of which continue to this day.)
These things should give everyone pause.
Jews in the West serve a function that is almost unique. The only analog I'm immediately aware of is the imperfect one of the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. That is, they act as a sort of 'canary in the coal mine'. When people start going after them, in fits of resentment and envy, a society is on the edge of an abyss.
We've seen this before.
It went to a place so horrible, that for 7 decades there was such consensus on its odiousness that it, almost alone amongst all topics, was so universally agreed upon that it was not at all political.
That is no longer the case.
And that is a terrifying thing.
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January 17, 2025
Going Out of Town
I have to go out of town this weekend.
Tonight's stream is cancelled.
We MIGHT make it up tomorrow evening.
I any event, Streams should return to normal by Sunday night.
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Unpleasant Distinctions Between Vile and Illegal
So as I write this, Neil Gaiman is being accused of....
I shall not elaborate upon the specifics of said unpleasantness because I do not hate you.
I could have lived a long, happy, and fulfilling life never knowing any of the details of what is alleged to have gone on between Sir Neil and various of his female fans. That path is now closed to me forever. I do not wish to inflict that fate upon you, gentle reader.
It's appalling. I have always liked the fellow's work, and while I can separate the work from the artist that's a heavy lift in this case. He also struck me as a fairly good dude. On the one hand, the idea that a darling of the left is behaving badly towards women is no surprise. On the other hand, what Sir Neil has allegedly done (and not denied) is WAY beyond the pale of what we would expect from even the mouthiest male feminist. And on the gripping hand, there is the little issue of consent.
There are things that are so objectively "ICK!" So completely wrong, that are red flags along the path to the moral event horizon.
Now. I am a conservative. So I am reported to be neurologically more inclined to disgust than a leftist or a libertarian. However, I do not think that most of my Left/Lib acquaintances would not be squicked out by the allegations. The allegations are THAT vile.
However....
Wait. HOW can there be a However...or a but?
What is alleged is unspeakably AWFUL and so beyond the pale that anyone, who has the faintest grasp of hygiene, propriety, and basic human decency is going to say..."Nope!"
And yet, as much as it nauseates me to say this, there is, a "But..."
"So that's how Brickmuppet died, the villagers all burned him"
Kat Rosenfield is an author that I am not familiar with, but she has looked at this sordid affair sufficiently closely that....that I'm giving her the side-eye.
However, she's looked at the statements from both sides of this little slice of Weimar and notes something.
There's a moment in the Gaiman exposé where the main accuser, Scarlett Pavlovich, sends him a text message asking him how he's doing. Gaiman says he's struggling: he's heard from people close to him that Pavlovich plans to accuse him of rape. "I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed," he writes.
"It was consensual (and wonderful)!” she replies.
Except: she doesn't mean it. We know this because Lila Shapiro, the author of the piece, breaks in to tell us as much:
Pavlovich remembers her palms sweating, hot coils in her stomach. She was terrified of upsetting Gaiman. "I was disconnected from everybody else at that point in my life,” she tells me. She rushed to reassure him.
This is a major issue with our society right now for several reasons, but I'll focus on two.
Sir Neil's behavior and appetites are apparently grotesque. I get nauseous just typing about this and will not revisit this...EVER.
HOWever, it seems that Sir Neil believed that the ...trysts... were consensual. AND at least one of the victims seems to be in agreement on this point in as far as Gaiman's point of view. She actually says in the quoted text that she lied to him, allegedly because she was, what, afraid? disgusted?
Why was there not a "HARD NO!" ?
As a dude who has just thrown in the towel on the minefield of dating post Me-To, this affects me not at all. But IF this is true, and the women never said "No!" How is this an assault on anything but the concept of decency?
How can ANY man date now?
This is a question that's been pending for years as the bar for what's considered rape and sexual harassment has been lowered steadily for 30 years, but it is especially germane here, where the woman actually says she consented, kept up a brave face and then ....
Yes. This behavior by Sir Neil that is alleged is loathsome, and so foetid that it would curl Caligula's nose hairs, but there is a LOT of stuff that is very disgusting, especially to folks like me. Do we really want "yes" to mean nothing.
Now if this (or any sexual impropriety) had happened to a child, then this would not be an issue, because a child cannot give consent, no matter how often they say yes. In THAT sort of situation, I would be perfectly fine with Sir Neil (or anyone) being skinned alive rolled in salt , bathed in iodine and injected with stimulants to prevent him from passing out before his death rattle if that was the case*.
However, This appears to be an adult woman. And that has FURTHER implications, which Kat Rosenfield touches on here...
The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world's adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can't have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn't mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes. [quote/]
This infantilization of women is likely to have some pretty vile consequences for the fairer sex going forward if nothing is done about it.
There are a vast number of men I met in college, who, unlike me have NEVER had a positive interaction with a woman. That may sound silly and irrelevant but look at the most strident misandrist feminists. They did not spring forth fully formed from the head of Zeus or anything, most of them had real trauma that made them the people they are now, and what they are is generally a bitter enemy to all men. They are human beings who react to trauma as people do...as are men
What we have is a growing cadre of men who see women as deceitful tormenters, an education system that stresses that any form of oppression justifies ANY response, and, increasingly, a legal system that says women can't be expected to have any agency.
This is not a good combination.
I'm an American Conservative. I'm old fashioned. I believe that grown women actually are fully formed adults with agency and an ability to make decisions, and because of their slightly different neurology they look at things from a slightly different perspective and so having them around provides valuable crosschecking to problem solving and enriches our world in myriad ways beyond mere procreation.
We'll see if my somewhat romantic and archaic views can be reconciled with current year attitudes toward women's decision making ability.
Also: Sir Neil seems to be vile.
*I know, I know 8th amendment, but we can still dream when it comes to pedos.
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January 15, 2025
Who could have EVER seen this coming?
I'm sick of current events. Let's look at a historical video from a simpler, happier time, before all this crazy stuff happe.....oh pooh.
Lessons (that were already being ignored) begin at 19:00
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January 10, 2025
Snowplocalypse Incoming
We're getting a few inches of snow with the complication that we're also expecting a quarter inch of ice. Work is on a Christmas-like schedule so I'm going to stream later and go straight to work.
We'll be doing Genshin Impact tonight from 9pm EST/ 01:00am UTC, until the power goes out or I have to leave for work. https://www.twitch.tv/brickmuppet
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So what's going on in Cana....
Oh.
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January 05, 2025
FIRE!
Join us tonight at 8pm EST/ Midnight UTC as we continue to explore the Outer Ring in Zenless Zone Zero! THERE'S FIRE! THERE'S PIGS WITH SPIKY BASEBALL BATS (Who are ON FIRE)! THERE'S EVEN MORE FIRE! MOTORCYCLE RACES...IN FIRE! & FIGHTING OF MONSTERS...IN THE FIRE! https://www.twitch.tv/brickmuppet
...and a girl wearing a pickelhaube for some reason..
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Perfunctory Posting
more...
Small bit of Banality below fold.
As both compensation and as reader trauma reduction here is a celebration of current year.
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December 30, 2024
James Earl Carter 1924-2024
President Carter has died after a century of service to the U.S. and the world.
Naval officer, nuclear engineer, statesman, farmer, diplomat, and president are not career paths that often overlap but they did with James Earl Carter.
People of my generation tend to judge Carter harshly due to his diffident presidency and uninspiring public presence. His term in national office coincided with a number of national setbacks typical of the 1970s, an evil, violent decade that saw the country suffer many misfortunes (including the birth of yours truly) and he most certainly did not reassure or inspire the public.
To be honest Carter faced a steep learning curve as a president who was dealt dreadful hands on myriad foreign and domestic fronts as was typical in that benighted decade. Due to his well intentioned but unrealistic philosophy, many of his policies probably exacerbated the already serious economic woes of the country. However, he was a fairly effective diplomat in some areas, and his appointment of Paul Volker to the federal reserve allowed some needed, if incomplete, reforms, put forth by his successor to bring the country out of its tailspin.
Carter's real contribution to the country and the world revolved around his post presidential career, where he served as a sort of ambassador at large working tirelessly to bring an end to destructive conflicts around the world. He also founded numerous charities, such as Habitat for Humanity, for which later generations rightly hold him in high regard.
His greatest achievement appears to be the elimination of the malevolent scourge that is the Guinea Worm. There were 3.5 MILLION cases worldwide of this awful, agonizing, debilitating parasite in 1986. As it is a malady associated with extreme poverty and has no pharmaceutical treatment it was singularly uninteresting to the powers that be and the professional charity class. Carter set up a organization to deal with the issue. As it was not treatable with pharmaceuticals he went after the monster's life cycle in a manner befitting an engineer, providing improved sanitation to millions of the world's forgotten and ignored. As mentioned above, 3.5 million new cases were recorded in 1986. Last year there were 14.
He lived a century, and his time here was not wasted.
In his final years Carter suffered the loss of his beloved wife and had been in serious physical decline. We can gain some solace from the cessation of his pain, even as we mourn his passing. A sad event which makes the world a less bright and hopeful place.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
08:41 AM
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Post contains 428 words, total size 3 kb.
December 25, 2024
Merry Christmas!
I hope everyone out there is having a wonderful holiday!
Please take care!
Weeby Christmas Art by Csyday.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
10:31 AM
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December 24, 2024
IT'S OVER!
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The last of the presents is on the big brown trucks. They have left the building to deliver happiness to all the little children....at least the children whose parents don't celebrate Festivus. The month of pain is at an end. Sleep, is, once again, an attainable goal. In celebration, here is a picture of....OH WHAT THE HELL JAPAN?!??!!!1!
Picture by Rai
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
09:35 AM
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December 23, 2024
Stream Cancelled
I was so exhausted when I got off today I salted my coffee and sweetened my grits.
I'm not much better now.
The ZZZ stream will be moved to tomorrow night.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
07:23 PM
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December 17, 2024
Cardboard Tsunami
more...
Banality lies below the fold.
As compensation here is a stark-raving-cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs chunni archer cosplaying as a normal person at Christmas.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
01:54 PM
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Post contains 354 words, total size 3 kb.
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