who is your favorite president/leader and why

[GaryGnu42]

Redblack: Obama must have gotten ahold of Reagan’s playbook because we’re at $13 trillion now with no ceiling in sight.

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[redblack]

yeah, but republicans will never – ever – be able to deficit-spend again without looking like the bald-faced hypocrites that they are. thanks to the teabaggers, their spending policies are now front and center.

obama beat them at their own game without much loss of political capital – which credibility he never had with “conservatives” to begin with.

to mix multiple metaphors: republicans might be playing rugby, but obama is still playing chess…

(whether he knows it or not. full disclosure: obama may have engineered republicans painting themselves into this corner, but i’m more inclined to believe he lucked into it politically.)

btw, the ceiling is $13.9 trillion. it’s well within sight. republicans will have to vote to raise that ceiling around the summer of 2011. their only alternative is to raise revenue – i.e. cut corporate subsidies, raise tariffs, and/or raise taxes on those sectors which can afford it.

gotcha.

spending cuts – no matter how deep – won’t cut the deficit in an already-hamstrung budget, and 90+ percent of americans are reaching the end of their collective rope when it comes to cutbacks.

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[dawsonct]

Amazing what happens when you put on the books the two wars your Nation is fighting.

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[metrognome]

DP — I want to acknowledge your effort in post 38 to return this discussion to the question in the original post as well as to bring some civility back by asking another poster specifically why he chose Ronald Reagan. I’ve pretty much quit posting on political threads because I find many of the posts to be off-topic and downright rude and arrogant and in my opinion, bordering on violating WSB rules because they attack individuals. The same information can be conveyed without resorting to these tactics. And many of these same posters decry the same attack behavior when it comes from a source they don’t like. If you act just like the people whose behavior you say is despicable …

Charlabob — it’s called hijacking when people start discussing topics unrelated to the original post; if someone wants to discuss a different topic, they should start a new thread.

hooper — thanks for starting this thread. I already chose a president; as far as suggesting a citizen to admire, I think Clara Barton accomplished an amazing amount and her contributions continue to have a huge impact on the US and the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton

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[redblack]

with all due respect, metrognome, we’re discussing the efficacy and merits of certain past presidents. conversations wander. the words “president” and “why” are in the thread title. and reagan was a man who changed from being a liberal to a conservative.

no intent to offend; just saying. the “ignore” link below each post is also a possibility.

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[JoB]

GaryGnu42…

yes.. the deficit has increased by 2.3 trillion since Obama took office…

but.. a great deal of that increase is due to the financial bailout that Bush instituted and the war that he started… not to social programs as advertised by the far right.

President Bush started with a 5.6 trillion dollar debt.. ended at 10.7.

5 trillion in 8 years…

but he was following a very strong republican tradition..

http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

Clinton on the other hand..

was able to reduce the deficit by the end of his 8 years…

I wonder how he did that?

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[JoB]

metrognome..

you don’t attack people when you attack the ideas they present.

you attack people when you call them names for the ideas they represent

or make insinuations about their characters because they refute ideas you hold dear..

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[DP]

Julia Butterfly Hill

Photo: Carl-John Veraja (Lic: Wiki Commons)

Feb. 18, 1974: Julia is born into a family of travelling preachers.

Aug. 22, 1996: She suffers a near-fatal car accident and reflects on the meaning of life, deciding to abandon consumerism and devote her life to more spiritual endeavors.

Dec. 10, 1997: After getting involved with the ecology movement, Julia takes the bold step of climbing 180 feet up into a 1500-year-old redwood tree in Humboldt County, California in order to draw attention to the clearcutting of old-growth forest in the area and to protect as much of the forest as possible. Although the original plan was for her to stay up in the tree for a week, she decides, with the approval of her EarthFirst! support team and others, to extend the tree-sit indefinitely.

Dec. 18, 1999: After living in the treetop (on two 6 x 6-foot platforms) for 738 days (!), Julia accepts an offer from the Pacific Lumber Company to spare her tree (“Luna”) as well as a six-acre patch of forest surrounding it. She then climbs down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Butterfly_Hill

Julia wrote a book about her experiences (The Legacy of Luna) and continues her ecological and social-justice activism to this day.

Awesome. Simply awesome.

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[Carson]

DP,

I love that Movie (never read the book). I have actually been to Fortuna and seen Luna! I have also rode (ridden?) my bike on a few on the backroads and seen entire little cities they have set up in the tree’s. They are a devoted bunch for sure. I even have some pretty cool pictures, but I stayed on the ground. I took my wife down there after I told her the story of Julia but I can’t find the movie, I even tried Scarecrow. If you might know, there might be a dinner and viewing in it for you.

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[DP]

Send me some of your pix and I’ll insert them, Carson. I’m sure we can scare up a copy of the movie for you somewhere.

–David

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[Carson]

Sent what I could find!

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[metrognome]

redblack– you may want to go back and read the original post, which cited two American presidents and a British prime minister. The post title reads ‘president/leader’ and does not specify that the leader has to be an elected official. Since hooper1961 started this thread, I think he should be the one who decides if responses are pertinent to his intended topic.

JoB — what can I say but thanks for the laughs.

tafn

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[redblack]

metrognome, you have to understand that i respect most of what you post here on WSB.

i’m just saying, for example: look at the unemployment thread. it has wandered to and from tax cuts, government spending, republican/independent ethics, and so forth.

so why interpret one thread title strictly and others loosely? why question the “original intent” of thread’s founder? isn’t WSB forums a living document? :) i believe the thread founder’s intent should be determined by subsequent generations of commenters as societal needs arise.

YADATROT: i still think reagan was a lousy flip-flopping leader and an abysmal president. the u.s. devolved from the world’s biggest creditor nation to the world’s biggest debtor nation in 30 years, no thanks to him and all of those who were mesmerized by his “folksy charm.”

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[metrognome]

redblack — thanks for the compliment; I try to stick to factual answers that research ahead of time. As far as wandering threads, I realize that there will be some wider discussion on related topics and I have participated in those and in fact probably led them astray a time or two; I think mostly what I was objecting to was what I consider to be personal attacks in the political threads that are disguised as attacks on ideas when they are really attacks on the poster. To me, this simply is mirroring the dysfunctional ‘conversation’ at the national level (i.e. you scream at me and I’ll scream back at you; meanwhile, neither of us is listening and we’re both making assumptions about the other based on the labels we’ve assigned); I don’t see any value in participating in that kind of conversation or feel the need to defend what I’ve said (I have apologized when my comments seemed inappropriate in retrospect.) It is just as easy to respectfully disagree and offer a different point of view.

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[JoB]

metrognome..

ok. i’m tired. i’m cranky.

and i am tired of the personal comments.

You don’t get to decide that someone else’s comments are “personal attacks in the political threads that are disguised as attacks on ideas when they are really attacks on the poster”

and then make personal comments about the poster based on your decision.

You know what they say about assumptions don’t you?

It simply makes an ass..out of..u..&..me

killing the messenger has never changed the message…

as long as the message sticks to ideas… taking it personally is.. well..

a personal choice.

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[DP]

Well, this is an interesting question about what constitutes leadership, isn’t it? I believe there are actually many ways to lead, but one of the best ways is to lead by example.

Julia Butterfly Hill is clearly a leader by example. She’s not organizing demonstrations or lobbying Congress, or anything like that. But maybe lots of people are watching her do good things, and that inspires them to go out and do something good too.

It’s the “Butterfly” Effect, right?

 

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[metrognome]

JoB, yes, I do actually get to make that decision as it is a personal one. And my decision is to leave y’all to have fun playing the game.

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[JoB]

metrognome..

it would be a shame if you chose to simply walk away from the conversation because of some misguided perception of “the game”. You have often had an interesting and challenging point of view.

that old adage about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes before making decisions about them has more than a grain of truth in it.

Even when you think you know someone really well.. it’s pretty much impossible to actually know what their motives are for any given act.

You can make an educated guess and the better you know that person the more accurate that guess is likely to be.. but it will still be a guess.

I can’t speak for the mysterious “others” … but I can tell you that in my case… your guess pretty much reflects your personal knowledge of me… it is dead wrong.

For me… it really is all about the ideas and the conversations that revolve around them.

I am truly sorry you can’t see that.

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[Ken]

I have stayed away from this thread since I know too much history to choose any one of the sometimes both great and flawed leaders in our history.

But I have to comment on the inclusion of “Silent Cal” Coolidge.

Cal was a anti union theocrat who presided over the roaring twenties and the robber barons by appointing industry insiders to regulate the industries they were beholden too. (a republican tradition that exist to this day)

The great Mississippi flood or 1927 was the model for Bush’s response to Katrina.

On the other hand, due to his policies and advocacy, by 1927 only the richest 2% of Americans paid ANY income tax. He advocated civil rights for Blacks and Catholics, (didn’t know states had laws repressing Catholics did ya)and signed the Indian Citizen ship act which Bush (among several thousand Republican leaders since) could never understand.

So each leader mentioned here, including Chavez, MLK and Ghandi, were/are normal human beings with both wings of greatness and feet of clay.

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[DP]

That’s a cop-out, Ken.

Why don’t you just jump in the pool and give us a name and a story? We will assume that your hero has flaws, just like every other human being. But this thread is not for talking about human flaws, because we do that enough already.

No. This thread is for talking about human virtue.

So come on. Give us a name. You can do it . . .

If you drag your feet too long, I’ll just blurt out a name that you were thinking of, and then you’ll be going: Damn! DP said what I was going to say!

Now how ridiculous is that?

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[JoB]

well put Ken..

“normal human beings with both wings of greatness and feet of clay. “

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[DP]

We all know that Carson’s just a dog — a wheaten terrier to be exact.

But ah . . . what a dog !

He sent me the pictures below — taken by himself — showing a Butterfly-style “tree sit” in progress.

Below each picture is a link to an uncropped hi-res version of the same photo. Beware: the large versions may take some time to download.

hi-res: http://roominate.com/blogg/treehugger/treehugger1_large.jpg

In the first photo you can see at least two platforms. I would guess the lower platform to be a kind of staging area used for visiting purposes or for hoisting supplies farther on up the tree. The upper platform, which looks to be about 50 feet from the crown, could have been used for normal sitting. I imagine if the police sent someone up to apprehend the sitter(s) they could just scramble on up to the upper platform. (If you read the Wiki piece on Julia Butterfly Hill, you’ll know just why this was an issue.)

Note the communication cables near the crown, connecting this tree with another one off camera.

hi-res: http://roominate.com/blogg/treehugger/treehugger2_large.jpg

The second image gives you some perspective on how far up the tree even the lower platform is. Dizzying, isn’t it?

Note the cables again.

hi-res: http://roominate.com/blogg/treehugger/treehugger3_large.jpg

The third photo shows yet another kind of rig. The dimensions of this set-up are similar to Julia Butterfly Hill’s 6 x 6-foot platform and allow for some sheltering from the elements. I’m guessing these were long-term living quarters for some tree-loving idealist.

You can imagine what the containers suspended on the outside are for. Let us hope there was never any confusion among the ground crew as to what was in each of the respective buckets.

;-)

All photos by Carson the Wheaten Terrier.

Carson, you may now make corrections or make any comments you think appropriate . . .

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[Carson]

David, you got it! What I couldn’t capture because of the terain was they have tents in several trees! You can see the cable on the top of the first picture and they used that to shuttle food and such between them!

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[Author]

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