I don’t know that we can make such statements “without doubt”. I’m sure Carter was moral, but so were other presidents.
Herbert Hoover was moral, and if we are measuring by the number of lives saved, Hoover likely wins hands down. His personal efforts, outside of the presidency, helped save hundreds of millions from hunger and starvation.
It will take some doing to get some data on what Reagan made in post-presidency vs. Clinton. Not that I have perfect memory, but it seemed that in 1989 you could hardly go a week without seeing Reagan making a buck here or there. You also have to consider that many of Reagan’s appearances were strictly to promote a private enterprise, something that other ex-presidents rarely if ever did.
An item recently in the news was the disconnect between Hillary Clinton’s statements on the Dubai port deal and the actions of Bill Clinton, who was collecting fees of more than $300,000 per speech from the UAE and advising the government there on how to proceed with the deal. In addition, the UAE has contributed a great deal of money to the Clinton Library.
Maybe not a strictly private enterprise, but one owned by a foreign government.
Care to comment, BobLibDem? Seems a bit worse to me than a few speeches to the Japanese.
Come on, Clinton’s a piker compared to Reagan.
I think I’d rather make $1 million in 1989 dollars than $300 thousand in 2006 dollars.
I see. So you’ll let Clinton off the hook solely because he isn’t quite as big a whore as Reagan?
If you are against the practice in general, then you have to be against what Clinton did for the UAE. Otherwise I’d be forced to conclude that your criticisms of Reagan alone on this score are partisan sniping.
I won’t let Clinton off the hook as this is also unseemly behavior. I put him somewhere between the saintly Carter and Reagan. Sure, I’d like to see Clinton do more good and less profiteering from his presidency. I admit that I’m a bit biased in that I get more upset with less than saintly behavior by former presidents that I believe were bad presidents than I do with similar behavior by former presidents that I believe were good presidents.
Fair enough.
The $300,000 was cited as “per speech”. Unfortunately, we don’t have the obvious missing information (the number of speeches).
King Abdullah?
You can hardly blame Bill Clinton for earning as much money as possible. He’s likely saving up for his next lawsuits. 
He was attacked by a ferocious rabbit in the middle of a lake.
He saw a UFO.
He has admitted he believes that ultimately communism will be the only workable solution for organizing society.
In other words, he is prone to profound delusion.
Many would argue persuasively that trying to bring any order to the relentless and persistent chaos that is Africa is tantamount to tilting at windmills. Billions of dollars have disappeared down rabbit holes and into the pockets of kleptocrats and the African “big man”. Well-meaning AID projects have collapsed from lack of follow-up and cuts in funding. Many would just say that anyone thinking he can make a lasting change in Africa is truly delusional, and I’ve been one of the naysayers. Mr. Carter is showing that it can actually happen if the will to continue is there and if one tries to attack problems at the root. If a people can be elevated above their day-to-day crushing misery, perhaps they will see alternatives to genocide.
I remember the rabbit story from 1976, but can you give us a cite for the other two?
Amusing. He was startled by a swimming mammal that acted aggressively near his boat. It looked like a rabbit. There is a photo of the situation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swamp_rabbit
How is that delusional?
He saw an unidentified flying object. I have no records of him claiming it was aliens. It was probably Venus.
If you remove need, communism is a wonderful method to organize society. In fact, it’s working pretty well right now in the one place that has no scarcity of resources. The more you have, the more you can give away, and still keep what you have. Peer to peer file trading, and the open source movement. Linux is communism. Surprise.
Really. Delusions? Think before you speak.
Well, that doesn’t convince me (I very much doubt it ever really convinced Carter) that ETs have been surreptitiously visiting Earth . . . but, in the terms stated, it doesn’t sound “delusional” at all. He and a dozen other people saw something weird in the sky. Happens all the time, and not because somebody put LSD in the drinks. “Sundogs,” weather balloons, all kinds of things are “unidentified flying objects.” There is always a perfectly logical, scientific explanation. Please look at this object I am holding . . .
I’ve seen a UFO with another witness present (and I’d love to be able to find out what it was). I’m also of the opinion that aliens (if they should exist) have quite likely never visited our planet.
That makes him delusional?
http://www.presidentialufo.com/carter_ufo_report.htm
Carter’s UFO report in his own handwriting, by the way.
Mammals don’t act agressivly near boats on inland lakes. The VIDEO which I have seen shows him completely freaking out and swatting the lake with a paddle. Later he explained that it was a “ferocious rabbit”. Ok.
Although I have seen Venus numerous times, I never felt compelled to call it a “UFO”. This, alone, puts him in the nutbag bin.
This, alone, puts you in the nutbag bin. Let me know when you have that “need” thing figured out, and I’ll trade you for my perpetual motion device.
So, let me get this straight. A buch of basement geeks stealing intellectual property and coding inferior products that make no money and no-one in business uses equals the victory of communism. Yah. Ok. Please step away from any sharp objects.
Build me an open source car as good as a cheap Toyota Corolla, and we’ll talk about the greatness of communism. Really, we will. Just as soon as that happens, which with the great power of communism should be any day now. Am I buried yet? (pounds shoe)
I have 28 years in computing experience. I am not switching to LInux any time in the future. I thought about it, but I like to run Lightwave and Photoshop and am not a gimp. And I get videogames that don’t looke like Tetris, 1982.
…
I apologize for the hijack. In the interests of fighting ignorance, I suppose I should point out that IBM is switching internally solely to linux, instead of taking the upgrade path to Vista.
I should also point out that you can play many video games and other programs under linux. Just as if they were running under windows.
Not different versions. The same software. And Photoshop is superior to GIMP. But, then again, nobody ever made money off linux products.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7096363910.html
Nobody uses it, either.
Lightwave doesn’t work under Linux.
Neither does Photoshop.
http://blog.photoblogs.org/2004/09/17/gimp-vs-photoshop-for-linux/
I should also point out that the point of the matter was that once you eliminate scarcity, communism works. Eliminating scarcity is the tricky part. The only place to do so is the world of software, where giving something away lets you keep it for yourself. Peer to peer software is not just used for piracy. Bittorrent, for example, was developed to allow, yes, linux CD images, to be shared. These are massive files, and cost bandwidth. Peer to peer allows the cost to be shared until it is negligable.
As far as Venus and optical illusions… well, I could talk about the moon at apex and how it looks larger when it is all but touching the horizon. I could talk about many things. It hardly makes the man a nutbag to call it an Unidentified Flying Object. It was unidentified, it was in the air, and it was an object.
As far as the video? Apparently, no such thing. It was captured on film. Yes. A picture.
http://www.narsil.org/politics/carter/killer_rabbit.html
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_019.html
I have never heard of a moving picture of the rabbit incident, sir.
You, sir, appear to be blatantly lying, sadly confused, or abysmally ignorant.
I invite you to change my opinion on such matters.