Jay,

Not a bad quote but I don't believe a word of it. Do you care to comment on what I said...in your own words? Using some one elses quote shows a shallow grasp of the issues. Did you live and work through the Reagun years? If RR bankrupted the USSR why were US economists going over for years before and later advising the commies on how to ease their economy into a pseudo-freemarket, pseudo-capitalist economy? How do I know this is true? I know an economist who was part of that team. The commies knew that they weren't going to survive long before RR came to the White House.

Here is an editorial letter written last Friday.

******

As Ronald Reagan is laid to rest today, the American political establishment and world leaders gather for a national spectacle in DC, and eulogies ring out like the droning of cathedral bells, it is crucial to this moment in history that we not whitewash the legacy of the 40th president.

Reagan's trademark was his sunny optimism and his inability to comprehend much below the surface of the scripted lines he uttered to create a new story for America. The president who ushered in the "Brave New World" of 1984 with unprecedented doublespeak, made conservatism respectable but remade America in the image of the wild west cowboy whose self-interest trumped our traditional commitment to the common good and common decency.

While Reagan's policies were not as ideologically consistent as his rhetoric, he planted the seeds of national disgrace and national disaster that are now being harvested by his successor, George W. Bush.

Reagan came to power with the "October surprise", a secret CIA deal with the Iranian theocracy to withhold the release of American hostages until after the election.

Reagan then turned around the New Deal and the Great Society and turned America's back on the poor, on minorities, on the environment. The word "homelessness" entered the lexicon under his watch and the great divide between the rich and the poor began a stunning expansion.

His laissez faire approach to the values of the "free market" led to the corporate scandals that threaten to engulf us today. And his undermining of the Constitution and the will of Congress in waging an illegal war against Nicaragua set the stage for the Bush administration to ignore the will of the international community, the UN Charter, and the Geneva Conventions to wage a war without end against a formless enemy and, in so doing, undermine America's moral position and traditional alliances in the world.

It took an actor-president to convince middle America that ruthless counter-revolutionaries and death squads and the murderers of American nuns in Central America (some of which were trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia) were "freedom fighters". And that allowed his ideological heir, George W. Bush, to repeat the words "fighting for freedom" like an obscene mantra as we wage pre-emptive wars of occupation which offer exorbitantly high rates of return to the current president's financial backers.

Former president Reagan presided over the "me decade", which saw record numbers of his administration become convicted felons, by making Americans feel good about being the biggest and the baddest. His true legacy lies in the extreme rightward drift of American politics, with its divide and conquer approach, which puts profit and power above human rights and human decency, and which turns the American drama into a tragedy of unprecedented proportions.

 

I'm one that thinks Reagan was a great man. It says alot about the dems- slamming him and him and his policies before he's cold.
I wish he could run again-he would have my vote. I think the republicans are the lesser of two evils. At least they have hints of integrety and character. Tomthetreehuggerguy-lol

 

I wasn't going to but I have to.

Tomthetreeguy, with all due respect you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Let an illegal gun runner setup shop in the White House.

What and whom are you talking about? cite?

Poked his nose into the democratically elected operations of governments in Central America. Supported and trained Death Squads.

The communist regimes were far more brutal than any of these mythical death squads that that were supposedly killing innocents all over central America. Fighting proxy wars as the USSR and the US were doing in the Cold War is nasty business. In the end, the Soviets, Cubans and their Communist allies were kept from establishing a beachhead in Central America and which in turn kept the US from facing a communist army and communist missiles on the southern border. One more defeat of Communism which hastened its death and kept us safer.

Ran up the federal deficit.

Congress ran up the deficit. Congress increased spending which despite the massive increase in tax revenue being generated by Reagan's economic policies (tax cut, cut regulations etc) ran up a deficit. The actual economic impact of said deficit is actually debatable but that is getting into economic theory which would put everyone to sleep.

Oh, and didn't he create a war in Granada? That was sure an important action.

Yes it was. It kept the Cubans and Soviets out of there and denied them access to another Caribbean airfield. It also eliminated another Communist regime in the Western hemisphere. It also sent the message that the US wouldn't hesitate to take on the Soviets when they tried to create another Cuba at our back door.

When the rescue mission went into Iran, Jimmy Carter stood up and took responsibility since he was Commander in Chief.

Jimmy Carter. It was his impotent policies that allowed the radical Islamist Iranians to come to power in the first place. Then he sat around for hundreds of days vacillating while we were humiliated daily and when he did decide to take action he screwed the pooch. Iran was symptomatic of the larger problem of Carter foreign policy and ideology in general. Not to bash Carter completely. He did make a couple a good changes in the US Nuclear C3I structure. Over all though you have to look pretty hard to find any sort of success in the Carter presidency. Back to the Iranian situation. Notice how the Iranians freed them as soon as Reagan came to office? They were scared sh*tless of him and rightly so. Oh I forgot. In the leftist fantasy world the CIA sent George Bush to Iran in the back seat of an SR-71 to negotiate with the ayatollah Khomeini to hold off on the release until Reagan took office. *sigh*

Don't dodge around and lay blame on the mechanics that didn't seal up the bearings on the choppers.

The problem went far beyond a simple mechanical error. That mission was doomed before it even lifted off for a myriad of reasons.

Oh, did you realize that all Federal empoyees got to have a paid day off last Friday?

Yeah I think everyone was pretty aware of that but thanks for getting us all up to speed.

Sure made for a nice three day weekend. How much did that cost? Sure doesn't fit with the image of Reagan being a fiscally responsible prez. What meaning does a day of mourning have it it makes for a three day weekend.

Good lord. Are you that petty? It was the death of a President and a state funeral. Sorry if it interfered with your schedule. Good freaking grief. Let it go.

I don't remember a three day weekend for Nixon.

At the request of Nixon himself as I understand it. Can you imagine the squealing and pissing that would have taken place in the media/left if Nixon had been given a state funeral?

If RR bankrupted the USSR why were US economists going over for years before and later advising the commies on how to ease their economy into a pseudo-freemarket, pseudo-capitalist economy?

There were plenty of communist sympathizers running over to the USSR during the Cold War to help all they could to keep the workers paradise afloat. It helped them bolster their arguments that the US should adopt similar policies. Some people call them collaborators or traitors. Either would do....

snipped the tedious leftist BS editorial

Where did you dig up that editorial? The latest issue of the Interantional Socialist Worker newspaper? The It is so full of outright lies and horsesh*t it must have come right out of some left wing communist/socialist/leftist rag. If not, it had to be written by someone of the same political stripe - Rall, Hitchens, Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Chomsky, Mao etc. Typical communist/socialist/leftist propaganda filled with the usual worn out BS and lies wrapped in smug superiority and general hate for America and American values. They could at least try to be original once in a while.

Yeah...Reagun was great.

Well that is one thing you said that I agree with. But you misspelled Reagan. It is R-E-A-G-A-N

 

Capt. Quint,

Thanks. I think you very elequintly put into words what most of us would like to say to the tree hugger. It's a shame I have spent the last 22 years of my life defending his right to spread his bull $hit but that's what makes America great.

 

Starky,

Thanks for spending your life defending America's freedoms. You don't say so, but is that 22 years in the military?

It seems that unless someone has served in the military they don't have any business speaking out against things that they feel are wrong. That line of thought swings towards a totalitarian society.

So, does this mean that I have a debt to you for your choices? I paid my taxes and did my part to run a successful company to keep people employed and the economy strong. Isn't that a part of the American responsibility too. Different choices.

To blame congress for spending money and then giving all of the credit to Reagun for whatever you choose is contradictory. RR was in office, he was the leader. He takes the credit and the blame. At least that's how I run my company. If something goes wrong, I take the credit, when things go right, I share the credit with everyone.

There is no way that I'm going to go into Ollie North's doings. He got off on a legal technicality. Go study.

 

Yes, I've spent 22 years in the military and No, you don't owe me anything. As far as paying your taxes goes, that's the law not your choice. Being in the military was my choice. I'm sure if you had a choice to pay taxes or not, you would probably choose not to just like you chose not to be in the military.
It's good to know that somebody has privlidge to all the information that it takes for a president of the united states to come to a conclusion and make a decision. Or maybe you thought that he just lays in bed at night and thinks, "I think I'll attack a country tomorrow."
Anyone who has the guts to be president of a country like ours where everyone (except us in the military) has the right to bad mouth and riticule them for the decisions they make, gets my support. If I don't like the job they're doing then I vote for someone else next election. Maybe you would rather live in Iraq. Of course you would already be dead for what you've written in this forum, oh, wait a minute. We went over and kicked their *** and now they can bad mouth their president too. I guess you'll fit right in in Iraq.

 

To blame congress for spending money and then giving all of the credit to Reagun for whatever you choose is contradictory. RR was in office, he was the leader. He takes the credit and the blame.

Not contradictory. Facts are facts. Congress controls the purse strings especially so on the spending side. That is just a constitutional fact of life. Congress agreed to cut spending but they simply didn't. Actually if congress would just simply hold spending instead of increasing it every year there would be no deficit in a few years. The main cause of deficits is the monstrous size of the federal government, the equally monstrous number of federal employees and the likewise monstrous amount of waste. Frankly if congress were held to the same standards they hold "greedy corporations®" the whole legislative branch for the past few dozen decade would be in jail.

There is no way that I'm going to go into Ollie North's doings. He got off on a legal technicality. Go study.

Good lord Oliver North. That was the big gun runner bombshell you had. lol.

 

TreeHugger;

wow, you must be one of those two or three hundred people who voted against him. Thank God there aren't more folks like you. four more years of whimpering Jimmy would have been hard to live through.

 

CaptainQuint- One of the most intelligent argument rebuttles I have ever seen on here. good job and I agree. R-E-A-G-A-N was one of the best presidents we ever had.

As far as Carter goes, yeah, what did he do again besides give away the Panama Canal (we legally bought it from france and finished it- he argued that it wasnt ours. bullcrap)and lay down in the face of adversity both at home and abroad? Im sorry but I dont really think he did anything well as president. If he would have gotten 4 more years, we would all be speaking Russian right now, and standing in line for 6-7 hrs a day just for a peice of bread, or we would be history.

 

If you're going to go on and on about spelling, oh...by the way, I typed what I want, no mis-spellings or mistakes, [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] go look at the title of the thread. It's spelled mourning. Morning is the time between dawn and noon roughly.

How would you know if I'm a treehugger? For all you know, I might be a major stock holder in Maxim or Boise-Cascade. Maybe a geneolgist. Maybe I own a Christmas tree farm. Lots of tree things in the world besides tree huggers. Truth be told, I'm an arborist. Go look it up.

Here's a question for you, well, actually two...

Who said this?
Which political party was he from?

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the American public."

I'll make it a little easier, it wasn't Shrub, [that's what a little Bush is called in Texas] there are too many multi-syllable words in the sentence.

Here's a few more words to ponder. These by Richard Aldington, "Patritotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility." I'll leave you with some of the most profound words, from the great American wordsmith, John Prine, "Your flag decal won't get you into heaven any more, it's already overcrowded from your dirty little war."

See you in a few days.