Here are some comments from people on Ronald Reagan...
Reagan was once thought of as a cowboy, but since has been given most of the credit for the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.
I'm really sick of that "reason". Daddy Bush thinks he's responsible too. Silly moi, I thought it was internal!
-----------------
I bet $ would love to bug out of G8, but it hardly seems an excuse.
Raygun was an empty tux, a prop. He was the first phony-ass "imperial president" and the prelude to the farce of the sham that is jr.
C-span callers are certainly bringing up Iran-Contra (well, every other caller, Bwaah!), Raygun's colossal debt-mongering, and his feeble croak to "bring down this wall."
Buh-bye, Bonzo.
------------------
I want you to remember how the right wing shills harped about their perceived and puffed-up accusations of politiciation of Paul Wellstone's memorial service. How much you wanna bet that, not only will this service be more substantially politically biased, but the "liberal" media will make no notice of it whatsoever.
--------------------
When my mother was a 17-year-old waitress in Des Moines, Iowa, and Reagan was "Dutch Reagan," the sportscaster, she went out with him a few times. (He met her when she waited on him.)
My grandmother, who was very smart and impatient with people who weren't, told me once, "Ronnie was a nice boy, but he just wasn't very smart."
She also said she was glad they didn't last too long together (just a few dates), because she wanted to have smart grandchildren.
---------------------
I was sure he would go down in history as America's Worst President Ever, but I was wrong... only the second worst.
----------------------
I can't shake from my head the picture of Bob Dole weeping openly at Tricky Dick's funeral; can you imagine the crocodile tears yet to be shed by the rest of these criminal fucks when they put ol' Dutch in the ground?
----------------------
Jean Harlow & Ronald Reagan were born the same year - 1911.
She was developing into a good comedic actress.
He pretty much stayed in the B movies.
He created the biggest deficit (before Dubya) with tricke down economics. He defied Congress and sold weapons to our enemies. He shut down social programs. He started to widen the gulf between the very rich and the very poor. He financed and trained Osama bin Laden's terrorist groups to harrass the Russians. .....Oooopps.
She died at 26.
(sigh)
Society is like a stew. You have to keep stirring it or the scum stays on top.
----------------------
"History inevitably repeats itself. First as tragedy, and after as farce." -- Karl Marx
------------------------------------------------------------------------
all that and the price of reefer doubled soon after he took office. is he not responsible for the endless war on drugs?
-------------------
This two year old article details all the reasons that Reagan deserves vilification rather than canonization - in excruciating detail.
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/02/22/cover-washburn.phpNot Too Late for a War Crimes Tribunal
by Jim Washburn
"As time goes by, it becomes clear that President Reagan was not only a great president but also one of our greatest, right up there with FDR, Lincoln and maybe George Washington."?Dana Rohrabacher, in the Feb. 7, 2001, Daily Pilot
Move over, Lincoln?we¹d like to blast Ronald Reagan¹s features onto Mount Rushmore. Erect a monument to him in every county. Engrave him on the $10 bill. Make a book extolling his character and achievements mandatory reading for schoolkids.
He saved us from the Red Threat and from Jimmy Carter. He brought back morning in America. He is America. With a flick of his mighty pen, he turned ketchup into a vegetable. All hail Ronald Reagan!
Jesus, can¹t we just send him a "Best Wishes" card and leave it at that?
Being president is a tough gig, even for one such as Reagan, who, according to aides, worked two to three hours per day, napped at cabinet and summit meetings, and spent more than a year of his eight years in office kicking back on his California ranch. Living in the White House entails difficult decisions, crises to be dealt with, and the dragging responsibility of being the most powerful person in the world. It ages one unnaturally. Reagan even took a bullet for us on the job. Thank the man for that.
But when you talk about canonizing him, you can go suck a sprinkler head. Ronald Reagan may have been a likable guy?even in the White House, he answered his fan mail, sometimes enclosing a check to a citizen going through hard times?but his administration was also flat-out the most anti-democratic, hoodwinking, lying, Constitution-flouting, despot-coddling, rich-enriching, deficit-building, environment-despoiling, health-endangering, paranoid, cynical and fundamentally corrupt one in our nation¹s history. Name a strip mine for it if you must, but no monuments, please.
Chances are you¹re reading this for one of two reasons: you agree with me and enjoy getting pissed-off all over again at the perfidies of the 1980s; or, more likely here in Reagan Country, you disagree and enjoy getting pissed-off reading liberal crap.
It¹s you latter folk I¹d like to talk to here. I¹ve enjoyed pissing you off, and I look forward to many more prosperous years of doing so. But even more, I want to convince you I¹m right on this one because the nation we allowed ourselves to become in the 1980s was a rank perversion of the freedom and righteousness we all long for. I don¹t blame Reagan for that so much as I do the nation that so blindly followed him. And if we don¹t now take the hard look that many of us were unwilling to take then, we¹ll go sliding right down that phlegmy slope again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reagan caused mountains of harm with his pseudo-American self-righteous me-first mentality.
His having been President means nothing. And he died. SO? You die, I die, cannon fodder in Iraq dies. My kids may die before their time because of stupid and pathological personalities like Reagan and his ass lickers.
--------------------------
From The Encyclopedia of AIDS.
http://www.thebody.com/encyclo/presidency.htmlQuote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For Reagan, AIDS presented a number of potentially serious political risks. As a presidential candidate, Reagan promised to eliminate the role of the federal government in the limited American welfare state, as well as to raise questions of morality and family in social policy. When AIDS was first reported in 1981, Reagan had recently assumed office and had begun to address the conservative agenda by slashing social programs and cutting taxes and by embracing conservative moral principles. As a result, Reagan never mentioned AIDS publicly until 1987. Most observers contend that AIDS research and public education were not funded adequately in the early years of the epidemic, at a time when research and public education could have saved lives.
In the early 1980s, senior officials from the Department of Health and Human Services pleaded for additional funding behind the scenes while they maintained publicly, for political reasons, that they had enough resources. The Reagan administration treated AIDS as a series of state and local problems rather than as a national problem. This helped to fragment the limited governmental response early in the AIDS epidemic.
AIDS could not have struck at a worse time politically. With the election of Reagan in 1980, the "New Right" in American politics ascended. Many of those who assumed power embraced political and personal beliefs hostile to gay men and lesbians. Health officials, failing to educate about transmission and risk behavior, undermined any chance of an accurate public understanding of AIDS. The new conservatism also engendered hostility toward those with AIDS. People with AIDS (PWAs) were scapegoated and stigmatized. It was widely reported, as well, that New Right groups, such as the Moral Majority, successfully prevented funding for AIDS education programs and counseling services for PWAs. At various points in the epidemic, conservatives called for the quarantining and tattooing of PWAs. Jerry Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority, was quoted as stating: "AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals."
This larger conservative climate enabled the Reagan administration's indifference toward AIDS. The administration undercut federal efforts to confront AIDS in a meaningful way by refusing to spend the money Congress allocated for AIDS research. In the critical years of 1984 and 1985, according to his White House physician, Reagan thought of AIDS as though "it was measles and it would go away." Reagan's biographer Lou Cannon claims that the president's response to AIDS was "halting and ineffective." It took Rock Hudson's death from AIDS in 1985 to prompt Reagan to change his personal views, although members of his administration were still openly hostile to more aggressive government funding of research and public education. Six years after the onset of the epidemic, Reagan finally mentioned the word "AIDS" publicly at the Third International AIDS Conference held in Washington, D.C. Reagan's only concrete proposal at this time was widespread routine testing.
Reagan and his close political advisers also successfully prevented his surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, from discussing AIDS publicly until Reagan's second term. Congress mandates that the surgeon general's chief responsibility is to promote the health of the American people and to inform the public about the prevention of disease. In the Reagan administration, however, the surgeon general's central role was to promote the administration's conservative social agenda, especially pro-life and family issues.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's see: Mt. Rushmore? Burn in hell?
Yup, sorry Ronnie, burn in hell it is.
And yes, Nancy and the Reagan brats are out talking about research now after his brain turned completely to mush. But they wouldn't have to be if the heartless idiot hadn't slashed research budgets all to hell.
---------------------
I hope he spends his time in hell chained to Richard Nixon, tormented by their thousands of innocent victims from Cambodia to Nicaragua....
-----------------
Those who do not remember the Past are doomed to vote Republican....
----------------
I feel sorry for Nancy, as anyone who knows Altzheimer's knows the family went through hell in his last years.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, at least a multi-millionaire's version of hell. Not like the poor working bastards who suffered and still suffer as a result of Raygun's policies -- those people who can't afford to erect a hospital suite in the guest wing and can't afford 'round the clock nursing care. At least he didn't have to die in a cut-rate nursing home tied to a chair in a pool of his own urine.
--------------------------
I despised Reagan and his policies. He was responsible for ushering in this shift to the Right, and all these Fundie lunatics who think God wants them to reshape the Earth. The first thought I had was DING DONG the witch is dead. That does not mean I can't feel sorry for the family for the way he went out.
----------------------
on Nancy's behalf, I heard today that she vetoed the GOP plan to replace FDR on the dime with Reagan. (remember that some months ago?) good for her.
doing that with the dime in particular was such a wrong idea. Nancy may be the only person they would have deferred to.
----------------------
When Ronald Reagan mandated the closure of the California State Hospital system without bothering to fully fund community mental health he murdered my Mother. For that I hope he burns in Hell.
-----------------------
Ronnie Raygun, The Crack Years -- The Cia/Crack Connection
http://rwor.org/a/v19/910-19/913/webb.htm------------------------
his fiscal irresponsibility, lack of response to AIDS, and Iran-Contra off the top of my head...but I'm trying to do my best to blank out that period from my memory...
----------------------
JUST SAY NO
The escalation of the War on Drugs, (the forerunner of the fascist "war on "terra".
The Iran Contra Scandal
First Imitation President.
-----------------------
There was nothing nice or good, presidentially or humanly, about Ronald Reagan. He was an actor for godssakes.
I see the rightwingers are basking in some kind of Reaganesque afterglow now, saying things like he was the best prez since Washington, that his WH answered letters and sympathized with furthering education for the disadvantaged, that he did great things for this country, that he was a good representative of Democracy at work, or that history will treat him as one of the greatest Presidents ever, etc.
Nothing specific, mind you... just this vague, overweening adulation.
Exactly what do they think Reagan did that was so great? I believe they think of Carter and the Dems as weak on defense and wrong for providing a social safety net for the poor, disabled, women, minorities, and other groups that are mistreated or poorly represented. They want to give Reagan credit for building defense and Star Wars technology, and for policies which led to the downfall of Soviet Communism. They probably think that Reaganomics was a good thing, and that his speeches were great!
All this is just pukemaking. The man was a smiling, avuncular psychopath who would turn on people without a pang of conscience. He turned on fellow actors and showbiz folks in the McCarthy era, and turned against the Democratic party and became a conservative Republican.
Also, under his Presidency, we saw deregulation, the S&L scandal, Iran-Contra, and manipulations of the drug wars to finance underhanded dealings in other countries. He also made it a policy to bust unions and scale down social programs.
After Bush43 Reagan was one of the worst Presidents ever! And Nancy Reagan ranks as the First Lady most reminiscent of Lady Macbeth.
--------------------
US is still the only country to be convicted of terrorism at the World Court, for mining Nicaraguan harbors. Not to mention 150,000+ dead in Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua as a result of Reagan's support of right wing death squads.
------------------
I never really liked the man. I never found the acting he did during his Hollywood career to be terribly convincing. I loathed his politics. I despised the policies his administration pushed for, which I believe laid the foundations for the neoconservative nightmare we face today. For all that, I can honestly say that I never really hated him either. I just wanted him, and by extension those who claim to be his ideological heirs, out of office.
I do hate the Mythical Reagan that the right has built around the Factual Reagan, much in the way that an oyster builds a shining pearl around a small and plain grain of sand.
--------------------
I lived in California under Gov. Reagan who started out with a 6 billion dollar surplus in our state and left us with a 3 billion dollar deficit. He killed programs like freezing rent rates for the elderly and closed women's shelters. Most and foremost, he kicked very sick mental patients out of state hospitals most of whom ended up being victimized in urban areas and sleeping on sidewalks.
He funneled huge tax cuts to corporations in California on that same old trickle down economics shit premise.
He was as much a callous bastard as his supposed self-appointed heir, Dubya.
They are all actors, some just worse than others.
---------------------------
I recently dug up Herblock's "Through the Looking Glass: The Reagan Years in Words and Pictures." Here are some snips. Their timeliness is spooky.
[Reagan's acting & media skills] "combined with a president's power to dominate the news and to get broadcast time, created what amounted to a new political equation - Reagan vs. reality - the taking of the public through the looking glass."
"In the spate of articles about 1984, some commentators noted that we did have an increase in a kind of newspeak. Tax increases had become 'revenue enhancers,' a gas tax was a 'user fee,' MX missiles were 'peacekeepers,' and the description of American troops in Lebanon as 'peacekeeping forces' continued long after they had ceased to keep the peace."
. . . "After promising a balaced budget and after having spent most of his political life denouncing deficits and unbalanced budgets as the root of all evils, including inflation, he ran up the biggest deficits in history." [blaming them on Congress and preceding presidents]
. . . "When the U.S. Information Agency, under Reagan's appointee Charles Z. Wick, was criticized for putting out propaganda at the expense of factual reporting, Reagan had a ready reply. He recalled . . . whe he recreated accounts of baseball games as they came over the ticker, filling in with his own local color and some imagined plays. He explained that this was an example of how truth could be bent with no harmful effects."
---------------------------
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=index2&cid=1033Video Of Bush Mangling Reagan Death Announcement
He is in sooooooo much trouble.
At least Reagan could pronounce tyranny.
---------------------------
Some of you will be amused I'm quite sure that a helicopter is following Ronnie's hearse down the streets like OJ Simpson's Bronco.
Just when you think the media couldn't sink any lower....
----------------------------
Dear Ronnie,
We are saddened today, when we think about your passing, and the legacy you leave to us.
For it is a legacy of stupidity, ignorance, dishonesty, greed, cruelty, and suffering.
Far from an amiable dunce, you were a wolf in sheeps clothing. A thief who snatched the American Dream from millions of decent people, and an evil con-man who sold mental poison to millions more.
True justice would have found you, and your grasping, pinched-faced-whore of a wife, painfully deteriorating, with no medical care, sleeping on cardboard in the streets, begging for change and being ignored by yuppie businessmen. An easy death in a mansion-house was too good for you. But satisfying, I'm sure. Go ahead and gloat.
And also take comfort in this: today, another man who studied you, plays the role you introduced. You played it well, and many, many others are studying, too.
So your ignorant words, your presence on this earth will continue to make it a little less livable for humanity, long into the future. Congratulations.
Goodnight, Gipper... history knows exactly what you were... just another tiresome, depressing expression of the banality of evil.
History is full of them, you were really nothing special.
Your buddy,
Jesus
(removing afro-wig and stepping away from the podium)
--------------------------
DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, but over on the other side of the pond we've got that reserved for when Thatcher shuffles off this mortal coil.
-------------------------
Btw, I'm okay with Nancy going against the idiot Bush on the medicial things. But she did something else wonderful I'll always remember her for--- When they asked her about Oliver North and she said firmly "He's a liar."
-------------------------
I cannot help but think of where I was 10 years ago, just starting out in the AIDS ward, and it was rare to walk into that place without seeing a covered body being wheeled out.
Because Ronald Reagan chose to do nothing at the start of the epidemic.
--------------------------
"In between all the "What a folksie guy!" "What a charmer!" "What a Cold War ender!" "What a great communicator!" "What a perfect couple!" bushwa, let's just remember what he really was: the successful prototype for the Repig strategy of putting a moronic useful tool in the chair and letting the true powers pull his strings. First an Alzheimer's sufferer, then a drooling fool, next perhaps a muscle-bound Austrian for whom the Constitution's criteria for presidential elibility will be changed. They're getting better at it every time, and we have Reagan to thank for being the guinea pig. "
I agree with everything here but that they're getting better at it.
Reagan was much better at appearing bipartisan. He fucked us over, but good, but he didn't openly shove stuff down the dem's throats. He took a moment to finesse them.
People don't talk about the black ball stuff, where he apparently named names.
Or the part where he was already so addled (or Rovian style bs was already in play) that he mistook acting in war movies with actually fighting in a war.
Still, I think he was a true believer, and I think he was less cynical. When Senior was elected, I became afraid, because while I hated his politics equally as I hated Reagan's (after all it was Shrub Sr.'s policy just as it is Cheney's now), Senior was meaner and more devious.
Governator is actually better at it than shrub, with all that "taking it to the people" bullshit. In the meantime he's busy trying to undo stuff we voted for before. Still a more congenial guy.
Shrub is just a nasty little twit.
By far my favorite (?) thing about Raygun was how Nancy fed answers to him because he either didn't hear or didn't understand the question. Remember the "holding my ear out, sorry, I didn't hear you" way he avoided answering questions?
I'm sorry someone died. I just wish he'd lived in obscurity between 1980 and 1988.
------------------------
One of the most informative accounts I've read on Raygun and the time he served as our President is "Sleepwalking Through History" by Haynes Johnson. Excellent work on the economic advisors Raygun believed in, his avoidance of any wrong-doing with Iran-Contra (seems GW has learned at least something about history). I highly recommend this book for all those who would like some ammo. against the right-wingers who will go to their graves believing ol Ronnie was the best thing since sliced bread.
--------------------------
Does anyoe remember the book The Clothes Have No Emperor? It is about the bizarre nonsense that past for public policy and public life during the Reagan administration.
--------------------------
I was ten years old when that soulless maggot set out to destroy the economy of the entire South (excepting, of course, the Independent Republic of Texas, where so many of his faithful sheep reside). He destroyed the working class in this country, he damned near destroyed the entire oil & gas industry in Louisiana, and he DEFINITELY destroyed the construction business in Louisiana.
Reagan, to me, exemplifies all the WORST of our country. Greed, censorship, and "manifest destiny" granted to those who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths or up their noses.
He helped crack destroy more lives in this country than any plague to yet hit humankind. He used the economy to help every greedy Wall Street bastard while taking homes away from hard-working men & women all over this country. He encouraged racism, sexism, classism, and turncoat pseudo-patriotism.
HE WAS AN INFORMANT FOR MCCARTHY AND PROUD OF IT.
He was the slimiest motherf...er to yet inhabit this earth.
And frankly, Alzheimer's was too good for him. He got off easy. He got to FORGET all the lives that he destroyed by being an informant, by being a stool-pigeon, by being a greedy, ignorant, hateful bastard.
He got off too easy.
I only hope that there is a hell, so that this m....r can mingle with Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover and all the other evil rat-bastards that have tried to destroy this country for their own warped, perverted fantasies of empire. And I hope that those ravenous vultures tear his wasted flesh from his hollow bones for the rest of eternity.
-------------------------
Yes. Someone died - boo hoo. It happens every day. It certainly happens more to brown-skinned people who are considered, by the fascists trying to entrench their power grip on this country, to be of no value.
Let's mourn for the innocents killed in the current horror in Iraq and let Reagan assume his rightful place in history, as a third rate actor who was weaseled into office by corporate scum who don't even now realize that their time is UP!
------------------------
I had a perspective on ron and nancy that many never saw, from the park across from the WH, where many (mostly poor or homeless) gathered.
One of our experiences involved the "royal" couple deciding that the furnishings in the WH were not good enough for them. When they threw this stuff (chairs, china, clothing, etc.) in the trash, they put an armed guard out to prevent anyone from digging this perfectly good stuff out to use.
We were routinely rousted from the park on this "president's" orders (even though many of the people had nowhere to go). This is the same "president" who then went golfing with his rich buddies in Palm Springs and told a reporter that he didn't see any poverty in this country (or something to that effect).
WE were NOT impressed.
-----------------------
In case anybody has a panic attack because people are speaking their true minds just try this little exercise:
Remember all the things the Freepers called the Clintons and accused them of when the Clintons were in office.
Now people are letting out pent-up anger, angst and the sense of helplessness we have had under the crooked Repubs.
----------------------------
It should also be remembered that Bush41 was Vice President for those eight years and the Bush Crime Family was going about their business deeply involved,if not directing, the activities mentioned above.
------------------------------
it's OK to support torture and murder in Central America, it's all forgiven, because of death ? His death squads killed nuns ya know,
------------------------------
The Clothes Have No Emperor -- Awesome chronicle of the Dark Ages in soundbites and headlines, and with the great pic of Nancy Reagan sitting on "I pity the Foo'!" Mr. T's lap and kissing his bald spot....
-------------------------------
I didn't vote for Reagan in 1980 or 1984 and never regreted it but I did regret him being president. It's terrible to have your worst expectations met. I have a little respect for Nancy Reagan lately because of 2 things she did. 1. She came out against putting Ronald on the dime. She said that one of Ronald's heroes was FDR. 2. She turned down the proposal for Ronald Reagan University. The people who put that together were in shock, after having done a lot of work on it. They just assumed that she would be for it.
For this reason, I think she showed some real class.
---------------------------------
Alzheimers is a horrid way to go... I wouldnt wish it on a dog.
But then again... I hope Reagan is treated in death just as he treated others in life.
---------------------------
We saw a few flags flying half staff later this evening in San Francisco and I got home and found out the news. Time to celebrate -- this man caused a lot of suffering and unnecessary death in America and was the beginning of a real decline for America's culture.
If it weren't for Ronald Reagan, all these mental cases wouldn't be on the streets of San Francisco living in squalor. Thanks to Ronald Reagan mental patients live on the streets today without the proper care or medication they would otherwise have received. Ronald Reagan's policy opened the doors to letting these people live on the streets without help and they closed down the mental health facilities -- this was a tragedy and continues to be today. Thanks to Ronald Reagan, greed took over America in the 80's with deregulation. People became mean spirited and intolerant -- people became animals in the 80's, wanting to get rich with the rest of the deregulated criminals. Nothing was ever enough for them, and they backstabbed and hurt the little guy to get their piece of the pie.
Reagan was nothing but an actor and a puppet of others, a bastard asshole elected by deluded, sick in the head greedy Americans. The beginning of a long hard road of deterioration for America.
May Reagan burn in hell -- fuck these God damn self-righteous GOP white assholes. Time to take them down to hell with Reagan! Shining city my ass!
----------------------------------
Regarding the death of Reagan, who made the decade of the 1980s the most miserable period of my life, I quote Ernest Hemingway from A Moveable Feast: "A so-and-so alive is a so-and-so dead."
-----------------------------------
Another horrid way to go is to be a nun in a group of nuns in El Salvador that is brutally raped, tortured and murdered by a Reagan-supported Salvadoran death squad. As horrid ways to go, go, that one really sucked.
-------------------------------------
Let us not forget his felonious cabinet. From VP spawner of the anti-christ, to Ed Meese (I swear, I never thought I'd see a worse Atty General--I actually confronted him at SF airport in the early 90s, and he pretty well ran away from me ), to John Sununu, to my personal favourite: James F..cking Watt. Remember him? He's the fundie secy of the interior who said out loud: "Why save the enviornment? The apocalypse is coming and the righteous will be with Jesus."
Anyway, the morass and hell we're living in today can be traced directly back to the Reagan years. The wind was sown in the 80s. The whirlwind is being reaped today.
---------------------------
Other Raygun greatest hits:
1. Bombing Libya. Killed Khaddafis kid. This started the 'if it feels good; bomb it, movement'.
Presidents Bush, Clinton, & Bush followed suit.
2. The 'October Surprise'. This was nothing short of treason; if there is any such thing, that's it.
3. Attacked Granada, just to distract from Lebanon disaster.
and on...
-------------------------------
We figured he was sick when he got confused and thought he had fought battles until it was pointed out to him that was only a movie. This is no joke; it happened. They must have known he was sick before he ran for reelection. Too bad they weren't patriotic enough to care about the country more than themselves.
-------------------------
* Ronald Reagan¹s perceived stature will plummet as history begins to make its impartial judgment.
I am convinced that that is why they were in such a rush to name as many things as possible for Mr. Gipper; future generations will not see him in nearly so grandiose a light. His role in ending the Cold War was negligible?he was simply poised to take undue credit. His borrow-and-spend voodoo economics will be acknowledged as a potentially disastrous mess that Clinton had to clean up. As the teflon erodes, the scandals and the little acts of evil will begin to attach themselves to him as well.
Let¹s acknowledge one thing, however. His political instincts were impeccable. His presentation and persona were unassailable. I have often said that if I wanted to create the ideal president from parts of recent chief executives, I would combine Bill Clinton¹s raw intelligence and political savvy with Jimmy Carter¹s moral rectitude and put them inside a Ronald Reagan suit. This man had the presidential bearing and demeanor down better than anyone since FDR.
Of course, that¹s not going to be enough to withstand the test of history.
------------------------------------
It's Mourning in America.
Get the CNN online poll...
What will Ronald Reagan be most remembered for?
Triumph of conservatism
Morning in America
End of the Cold War
None of the above isn't a choice.
--------------------------------
What will Ronald Reagan be most remembered for?
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ps3x/cyou/reagan.gif------------------------------
James F...ing Watt was the reason I started paying attention to politics. I mean in an SC kind of way. I saw what was going on, I recollect the pre-internet gossip about the October Surprise, but Watt is the one that got me yelling.
I hated him. He was a clueless smiling death's head. Said the Beach Boys were "unamerican" and tried to keep them from playing at the 4th of July. Reagan gave him a statue of a foot (foot-in-mouth award), and he posed with it, ya know, like "oops, silly me".
I can't even remember all the stuff that made me go insane over him.
Oh, here's something I just googled:
Watt resigned his Interior Department post in 1983 after boasting, "I have a black ... a woman, two Jews and a cripple" on an advisory panel."
A..hole.
I think that's when I decided to hate having Reagan as president, too.
Can you tell I hated James Watt? I hate Bush even more.
-----------------------------
You know, people are saying that Shrub will look puny in comparison to Reagan, etc., and that all this fawning will make Shrub look bad, etc., because Reagan was more articulate or whatever. Wrong. He was just as bad.
I found the following:
The Bonzo Years
http://www.quickchange.com/reagan/1981.htmlSome gems that should sound familiar, like a friggen time warp:
6/16/81
At his third press conference, President Reagan responds to the following:
· The Israeli attack on Iraq - "I can't answer that"
· Israels' refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty - "Well, I haven't given very much thought to that particular question there"
· Pakistan's refusal to sign the treaty - "I won't answer the last part of that question"
· Israeli threats against Lebanon - "Well, this is going to be one, I'm afraid, that I can't answer now"
· The tactics of political action committees - "I don't really know how to answer that."
When faced with skepticism about his administration's grasp of foreign affairs, the President declares "I'm satisfied that we do have a foreign policy."
11/23/81
President Reagan vetoes a stopgap spending bill, thus forcing the federal government - for the first time in history - to temporarily shut down. Says House Speaker Tip O'Neill, "He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can't even carry on a conversation about the budget. It's an absolute and utter disgrace."
11/27/81
In an interview with Barbara Walters, President Reagan describes his academic record: "I never knew anything above Cs."
2/27/82
The Congressional Budget Office finds that taxpayers earning under $10,000 lost an average of $240 from last year's tax cuts, while those earning over $80,000 gained an average of $15,130.
10/19/82
During a White House meeting with Arab leaders, President Reagan turns to the Lebanese foreign minister. "You know", he says, "your nose looks just like Danny Thomas's." The Arabs exchange nervous glances.
4/18/83
Seventeen Americans and 46 Lebanese are killed when a truck bomb plows into the US embassy in Beirut.
10/19/83
At his 20th press conference, President Reagan is asked about the safety of US Marines in Beirut. "We're looking at everything that can be done to try and make their position safer," he says. "We're not sitting idly by."
10/23/83
A truck bomb at the US barracks in Beirut kills 241 Marines.
9/26/84
President Reagan claims the latest Beirut bombing is the fault of Jimmy Carter, who he said "presided over the destruction of our intelligence capability." Carter responds that Reagan tends "to blame his every mistake and failure on me and others who served before him."
10/3/84
A House Intelligence Committee report finds "no logical explanation" for the lapse in security at the embassy in Beirut, since State Department and embassy officials had plenty of reason to suspect that a bombing attempt was not only possible but probable.
10/5/84
"I don't think he's read the report in detail. It's five and a half pages, double-spaced." - Larry Speakes responding to the question of whether President Reagan has read the House report on the latest Beirut truck bombing.
-----------
Stop me before my head explodes! And this man was re-elected by a landslide.
Pay attention people. It's deja vu all over again.
------------------
Ronald Reagan:
-- Described opponents of the war on Vietnam as "yelling like Tarzan, looking like Jane and smelling like Cheetah," or something to that effect.
-- Wasn't he the one who said something like "If those people in Watts don't like it there, why don't they move?"
-- In my opinion, the sort of bitterly partisan politics we're plagued with these days can be laid squarely at Reagan's feet. I don't recall anyone spitting the word "liberal" as if were a profanity before ol' Dutch'.
-- Saddam Hussein actually DID have WMD once, because the Gipper's administration gave them to him. Then, Dutch and the boys tried to blame it on Iran when Saddam killed people with those WMD. (Saddam's killing people in large numbers didn't bug us back then, because he was Our Guy.)
-- Paved the way for Dubya's unpresidential shenanigans with his unwitting "We begin bombing in five minutes" comment about the Russians into a live radio microphone.
-- Courted the fundies as no other president had before. His run for president coincided with the ascendancy of televangelists like Falwell, Robertson, Bakker. (His appointment of C. Everett Koop as surgeon general sort of backfired when Koop became critical of the administration's do-nothing AIDS policy.)
-- Endangered public safety in 1981 by firing striking air traffic controllers en masse. This notwithstanding, the airport in our nation's capital is named after him.
-- Was the patron saint of deregulation, which gave us more scandals than I can remember. Most notable was the S&L debacle.
-- Gave us Iran-Contra, the War on Drugs, Afghanistan... and more.
---------------------------
"A great evil has departed. "
Gandalf in the Return of the King
------------------------------
Reagan buddy James Watt offered to help Wyoming's Shoshone/Arapahoe people manage their oil wells for something like 16% of the profits. Yeah, sure. In their wisdom, folks on the Wind River rez told him to take a hike.
----------------------------
When Governor of California, in reference to the campus rebellion he said: "If there has to be a bloodbath, lets get it over with."
----------------------
Unfortunately I live in a place that has an airport named after him. I begrudgingly use the airport but I still refer to it by its rightful name--National Airport.
-----------------------
- Any recap of the big doings in his presidency has to include the 1983 terrorist bombing that killed 241 Marines in Lebanon. Most sheeple have totally forgotten this ancient history, thinking that the 1993 WTC bombing was "the beginning." Ronnie took no action whatsoever to deal with those responsible, other than high-tailing it out of Lebanon and exposing the U.S. as a paper tiger.
- His funeral will be done and gone well before June 25 when Farhenheit 911 releases.
- Maybe now that he's on ice, eventually there can be a full discussion of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and the rest of his heinous crimes. (Did anyone see that Kissinger is trying to stifle a FOIA request into his role in atrocities in Chile?)
-----------------------
Think what annoyed liberals is that the GOP power structure has devoted so much energy to rewriting history and framing him as a perfect conservative and savior of the free world. He was not a saint.
BCCI, voodoo economics, the S&L scandals, Iran-Contra, closing mental hospitals and spilling patients into the streets, "ketchup is a vegetable," the southern strategy, etc.
He seemed a friendly, easy-going man, but his policies were destructive.
He was blessed with a truly solid relationship with his second wife. Lot's of people liked him.
When his illness began to manifest itself, people around him not only covered for him, they used him for their own purposes (e.g. the Iran Contra mess).
To her credit, Nancy has scotched several of the G.O.P. schemes to use his name and persona for political gain.
-------------------------------
Now I know how the Munchkins felt when the house fell on the wicked witch.
Do you think Reagan's coffin will disturb Barbara Bitch's "beautiful mind" and sorrow her son like the coffins from Iraq whose pictures were banned?
-----------------------
To hear the mawkish, sentimental slop on C-span this a.m., one would think Reagan was near to being canonized for sainthood. Well, maybe by the Radical Right.
In truth, the man ruined this nation- running up $2 trillion in deficits to pay for military BS like "Star Wars" and converting us from the world's foremost creditor to its major debtor.
THAT is what I will personally remember Reagan for, along with his lack of memory in front of the Iran-Contra commission.
As for the "collapse" of the former SU, Mikhail Gorbachev gets the credit, not Ronnie Raygun.
-----------------------
Here's a good one from BushCo's new best friend, Gaddafi.
Gaddafi Regrets Reagan Died Without Facing Trial
By REUTERS
Published: June 6, 2004
TRIPOLI, Libya (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi said Sunday he regretted that former U.S. President Ronald Reagan had died without ever being tried for 1986 air strikes that killed dozens of people, including the Libyan leader's adopted daughter.
``I express my profound regrets over Reagan's death before he appeared before justice to be held to account for his ugly crime in 1986 against Libyan children,'' Gaddafi told the official JANA news agency.
Libya recently emerged from international isolation after agreeing to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction programs.
Reagan ordered the April 15, 1986, air strikes in response to a disco bombing in West Berlin that killed three people, including two U.S. servicemen, which had been blamed on Libya.
Libya said more than 40 people died in the strikes, including Gaddafi's 15-month-old daughter.
------------------------
http://www.dkp-ml.dk/images/homeless.jpgReagan's legacy.
"It's morning in America."
-----------------------
