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Tenpoundbass
2013 May 16, 9:48am
Yeah, he liked little wars, like Granada, and the Falklands.
One was not a war, and the other was England's conflict. That was a Margie crisis.
Grenada gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1974. The leftist New Jewel Movement seized power in a coup in 1979 suspending the constitution. After a 1983 internal power struggle ended with the deposition and murder of revolutionary Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the invasion began early on 25 October 1983, just two days and several hours after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, early Oct. 23 Beirut time, late evening Oct. 22 U.S. Eastern time.
The Falklands War began on Friday 2 April 1982, when Argentine forces invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. The British government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force, and retake the islands by amphibious assault. The resulting conflict lasted 74 days and ended with the Argentine surrender on 14 June 1982, which returned the islands to British control. During the conflict, 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel and 3 Falkland Islanders died.
I keep telling you folks, I was around then. This sucks ass compared to what a horrible horrible president Reagan was. In retrospect, if the only positive thing that can be said about Obama is he kept us out of wars,( Yet we're doling out drone strikes indiscriminately in Pakistan, how is that not a war?) then Reagan was great by those standards.
He is a man who accomplished a lot as a president, even got Congress to reform tax code. Life in America did improve with him as president.
80's were the golden age of America.
You know the republican mythology well.
Ceffer
2013 May 16, 1:13pm
I think Mia Farrow blew Frank Sinatra and said he tasted like embalming chemicals when he was still alive.
Ceffer
2013 May 16, 1:15pm
The "War on Drugs" was actually a brainchild of Nelson Rockefeller, and adopted by Nixon as a convenient "get tough" distraction from other issues.
Ronald Reagan is the person most singularly responsible for creating the unjust and unproductive rich-poor gap that we experience today. That is why he is worshiped by the right and despised by everyone else.
you rather we had Carter and Mondale.. yea that worked out well ....
the liberal policies of the 70s made everyone poor.
Liberalism didnt work ... get over it!
I keep telling you folks, I was around then. This sucks ass compared to what a horrible horrible president Reagan was.
Amen!
marcus
2013 May 16, 11:14pm
I keep telling you folks, I was around then. This sucks ass compared to what a horrible horrible president Reagan was.
Amen!
The captain was young then. Ten pound bass hadn't even been caught yet.
Now he's a cranky old man, just recently having gotten through male menopause. This is the biggest factor affecting the difference in his world view between then and now.
But it's irononic that he looks back fondly on Reagan who is the one who started the biggest credit bubble of all time, that we are now dealing with. We have a problem that Reagan started, that probably has no nice solution. Either extreme austerity for a protracted period, causing a severe depression, or inflate our way out of it, with working man's wages not going up as much as prices. Either way, the 99% are SO FUCKED.
Right. Yeah. Thanks Ronnie !!
marcus
2013 May 17, 12:16am
Liberalism didnt work ... get over it!
Carter was in office during the inflation of the 70s, it's his fault, he sucked.
(although he appointed Volker to the fed, who finished getting inflation under control a few years later, and setting the stage for a double digit drop in interest rates and the mother of all economic booms)
SO Reagan comes in, presides over this lucky timing, also spending like crazy, even though he lowered taxes (can you say MASSIVE DEFICITS?)
and we have the age of the me generation and "don't worry - be happy."
Yeah, REagan was sooooo wonderful.
zzyzzx
2013 May 17, 1:35am
In addition to causing 99% of the American population to lose the dream of their kids doing better than they did,
I'm pretty sure that had already happened before Reagan took office.
Reagan would be considered a liberal by today's GOP standards. Not only did he raise taxes 11 times, but he also increased the deficit enormously. Compared to his modern day counterparts, he actually knew the meaning of the word "compromise". So its ironic that so many conservatives place Reagan on a golden platform when if a candidate that acted like him today would never make it to the white house.
FortWayne
2013 May 17, 2:48am
He is a man who accomplished a lot as a president, even got Congress to reform tax code. Life in America did improve with him as president.
80's were the golden age of America.
You know the republican mythology well.
Spare me your partisan politics. Reagan took care of Americans, lunch wasn't free there was a huge deficit, but life in America did get better. Job situation improved, incomes improved, living standards improved.
What do we have today? Unemployment, vanishing wages and jobs due to rampant off-shoring. Living standards declining, people are losing their homes, and their incomes. Seniors are getting squeezed more and more. While government thugs proliferate at browbeating, increasing taxes on the working class while at the same time sending American jobs offshore.
Your fellow liberals are running around Africa spending money feeling all self important, but forget to help the poor out in America. Steve Balmer and Zuckerberg are trying to amend the immigration bill to allow more off-shoring of Americans. And Obama is talking about raising age needed for social security, while not a single person under 40 understands how that heinous idea will starve seniors to death.
Yeah "humanity", results in this life speak louder than words. Hope and Change isn't working out so well for many. Maybe Obama should concentrate on economy more, instead of dicking around with non issues like gun control.
FortWayne
2013 May 17, 2:49am
APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says
Reagan was a pinko cuckold who didn't have the guts to blow Frank Sinatra himself.
There is a line a conservative man will not cross. That line starts at Frank Sinatra.
Yeah "humanity", results in this life speak louder than words. Hope and Change isn't working out so well for many. Maybe Obama should concentrate on economy more, instead of dicking around with non issues like gun control.
Perhaps if the previous administration had not so royally phucked everything up then Obama wouldn't have had the monumental task of having to fix the economy in the first place.
The one thing that Reagan did do that had unintentional and disastrous outcomes was that he grossly limited the powers of the SEC an various financial regulatory commissions. This was done to loosen up lending. It worked great. For awhile. The problem is that it enabled banks to sell loans up the river versus having that debt serviced in house. This thus limited their risk, and once that cycle started, it worked its way all the way up to the top of Wall Street, with each and every participant paying hot potato. Prior to the Reagan administration it was not super easy to get a loan and there were long adhered to regulations for the financial sector. After Reagan removed those regulations you can easily trace the series of boom-bust cycles leading right up to the climax in the mid 2000's.
So Reagan's real legacy was that he unintentionally started the whole debt-based economy we now live in.
Tenpoundbass
2013 May 17, 3:23am
just recently having gotten through male menopause.
It aint over YET! Now get off my lawn!
So Reagan's real legacy was that he unintentionally started the whole debt-based economy we now live in.
Well, said.
JodyChunder
2013 May 17, 8:45am
80's were the golden age of America.
Eh...not really...they were a time of artificially induced euphoria and marked the transition of the one of the lamest generations ever into the I-Got-Mine-Fuck-You-Buddy phase they ultimately came to embody.
The golden age, when the gravy was still hot, was between 1948 and 1961.
The golden age, when the gravy was still hot, was between 1948 and 1961.
Agreed. But only because after WW2 the rest of the industrialized world was in ruins, our country wasn't touched, and thus we were in a situation to basically make and sell everything for everyone else and had a nice little monopoly for a few years.
What I find ironic is that there actually is a "level of contentment" scale that is taken every year. The findings are that to date, 1955 is the year that more Americans were content than any other year. Ironic because back then the average American home was about 700 square feet, had a single car, a single radio or TV, a single telephone, and that was it. However the larger the houses become, so too does the level of overall contentedness shrink. Whether they two are connected is anyone's guess. But its clear that it wasn't because people in 1955 had a lot of crap. Perhaps its more because most in that generation had survived the depression and WW2 and were just happy to be doing ok.
curious2
2013 May 17, 9:02am
There is a line a conservative man will not cross. That line starts at Frank Sinatra.
LOL - I had been wondering who Disliked all the comments about Frank Sinatra, and why. Fair enough. That famous 1938 mugshot is a personal favorite, but probably not how he wanted to be remembered. RIP, Old Blue Eyes; today's youngins hardly knew ye.
JodyChunder
2013 May 17, 9:06am
But only because after WW2 the rest of the industrialized world was in ruins, our country wasn't touched, and thus we were in a situation to basically make and sell everything for everyone else and had a nice little monopoly for a few years.
That's part of it, but not entirely it. We had a lot of little secret ingredients that put us ahead of the pack.
Duke Ellington, Clark Gable, the transistor, Levi jeans, BVD, the flathead V8, log cabins, cowboys and Indians and hamburgers and french fried potatoes and Batman and Pepsi and Polio vaccines and Converse and ERECTOR Sets and Sinatra Fess Parker and Have Gun Will Travel and Robert Mitchum and King Kong and Mighty Joe Young and Walt Disney and Hanna Barbara and Raymond Loewy and Ford/Lincoln/Mercury and Cadillac and Playboy and John Ford and Woody Guthrie and Aaron Copeland and Frank Lloyd Wright and Western Electric and Elvis Presley and Doris Day and Marlon Brando and Sears Roebuck and Harley Davidson and Indian and Mickey Spillane and Jack Daniels and Smith & Wesson, The Naked and the Dead and Catcher in the Rye and John Huston and Jack Kerouac and JFK and RnB and glass packs and fried chicken and chicken fried steak and Cinerama and stereo recordings and Boeing and surfing and skateboarding and pinups and drag racing and Moog synthesizers and Fender and Gibson guitars and Marantz Hi-Fi and the Indy 500 and Lassie and 3d movies and RCA and air conditioning and...y'know...American stuff...the best shit...
Reagan ain't anywhere on that list...
Spare me your partisan politics. Reagan took care of Americans, lunch wasn't free there was a huge deficit, but life in America did get better. Job situation improved, incomes improved, living standards improved.
Reagan spent 4 trillion in borrowed money, the economy soared then crashed. Bush II spent 4 trillion in borrowed money, The economy soared then crashed. See any pattern here?
Dan8267
2013 May 17, 12:14pm
Ronald Reagan is the person most singularly responsible for creating the unjust and unproductive rich-poor gap that we experience today. That is why he is worshiped by the right and despised by everyone else.
you rather we had Carter and Mondale.. yea that worked out well ....
the liberal policies of the 70s made everyone poor.
Liberalism didnt work ... get over it!
Your ignorance never ceases to amaze. How many times do I have to tell you that Liberalism is a social philosophy, not an economic ones. The very phrase "liberal economic policies" is as meaningful as the phrase "invisible shade of red". But hey, keep fucking that chicken.
And blaming Carter for the economic problems of the 1970s is clearly a load of crap as shown by the following charts.
Hmmm, what happened in the 1970s that drained the treasury and wasted valuable resources? Oh yeah, Vietnam. And quite frankly, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon are all to blame for that wasteful war, the lost of lives, and the economic damage that resulted from it. Nixon was always a hawk. And let's face it. War is the greatest economic waste there is.
Nevertheless, as Elizabeth Warren illustrated, families in the 1970s had way more disposable income than families today. In some ways, the economy was better then. Notsomuch the fashion, but you can't have everything.
Nonetheless, there is nothing that any president from Kennedy to Carter did that comes close to destroying the American quality of life as what that puppet Reagan did.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/NR3RqMMIwD4
That's it, tell your puppet to speed it up.
Dan8267
2013 May 17, 12:16pm
APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says
Ike, hear our prayers!
Ike, the last good Republican. Wish he were still alive to kick some ass.
New Renter
2013 May 17, 12:29pm
APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says
Reagan was a pinko cuckold who didn't have the guts to blow Frank Sinatra himself.
How do you know he and Nancy didn't tag team "Old Blue Eyes"?
marcus
2013 May 17, 1:31pm
Reagan ain't anywhere on that list...
great list, but you went a little past '61 on a few things.
being a member of that lame genration (and kind of agreeing about so many boomers being lame), I put the golden age to at least mid seventies.
I would have included a few other GM cars, and drive ins. Even though I didn't grow up in the kind of town that had drive ins.
JodyChunder
2013 May 17, 3:35pm
Goddamn, Ron must've gone through five gallons of Vitalis every week.
Hmmm, what happened in the 1970s that drained the treasury and wasted valuable resources? Oh yeah, Vietnam. And quite frankly, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon are all to blame for that wasteful war, the lost of lives, and the economic damage that resulted from it. Nixon was always a hawk. And let's face it. War is the greatest economic waste there is.
as long as you dont mention all the social programs which failed it seems you rather talk and blame the war spending... no problem that several 100k nuclear missiles / devices were pointed as the USA. But than again, you still mistake USSR as some democracy. Did we have a choice ?
Nevertheless, as Elizabeth Warren illustrated, families in the 1970s had way more disposable income than families today. In some ways, the economy was better then. Notsomuch the fashion, but you can't have everything.
Since when was Elizabeth Warren any expert at anything.. read here bio!
a one sided social activist.. thats it! what great company or industry did she create..
shit.. she is another idiot found in the teachers lounge from Obama University.
.
and i see like a true partisan you are completely brain washed into thinking 70s were better.
since wage inflation driven by unions was crippling the economy. completely brainless to think
were were better off.
That's it, tell your puppet to speed it up.
Ever work for a people like Donald Regan ? I did.. Shit loads get done very fast.
They are task masters and do it now and not tomorrow. They make things happen,...companies, industries, jobs, nations... true heros. We need more good
people like him on our side... its no wonder Ron Reagan picked him... when he said .. speed it up.. thats what we look for ! I am sure Reagan appreciated it.
.
Oohrah! for the Marine.
.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Kathleen (née Ahearn) and William Francis Regan, he was of Irish Catholic origins. Regan earned his bachelor's degree in English from Harvard University in 1940 and attended Harvard Law School before dropping out to join the United States Marine Corps at the outset of World War II. He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel while serving in the Pacific theater, and was involved in five major campaigns including Guadalcanal and Okinawa.
The golden age, when the gravy was still hot, was between 1948 and 1961.
Agreed. But only because after WW2 the rest of the industrialized world was in ruins, our country wasn't touched, and thus we were in a situation to basically make and sell everything for everyone else and had a nice little monopoly for a few years.
good points and i agree..
Spare me your partisan politics. Reagan took care of Americans, lunch wasn't free there was a huge deficit, but life in America did get better. Job situation improved, incomes improved, living standards improved.
Reagan spent 4 trillion in borrowed money, the economy soared then crashed. Bush II spent 4 trillion in borrowed money, The economy soared then crashed. See any pattern here?
OK.. so Reagan spent 4T.. what was the alternative ? on Youtune watch the debate... all Carter was talking about was spending money on Healthcare... sounds familar ?
he wasnt talking much on job growth! thats why he lost!
so lets forget about what RR did.. and tell us what was the alternatives by the DEMS be it Carter or Mondale or even Gary Hart ?
what is it they had to offer ?
Reagan wasn't crazy enough to get the Republican nomination in today's political climate.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't he also the president that sold drugs to a bunch of criminals so that he could buy weapons to give to known international terrorists? The same president who would have been convicted of crimes in the S&L scandal had a deal not been reached? The same president who said he would lower taxes, but raised them instead? The same president who increased public debt (the deficit) to jumpstart the economy?
Sounds more like what today's Republican's keep accusing Obama of..
So you are saying Obama is great like Reagan?
coriacci1
2013 May 18, 4:05am
GREAT THOUGHTS OF RONALD REAGAN
"A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?" -- Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the Sacramento Bee, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park, March 3, 1966
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk." --Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980
"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas." --Ronald Reagan (candidate for Governor of California), interviewed in the Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965
"...the moral equal of our Founding Fathers." --President Reagan, describing the Nicaraguan contras, March 1, 1985
"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal." --Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976
"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts." --Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)
"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders." --California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966
"We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet." --Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964
coriacci1
2013 May 18, 4:08am
LAST FOND MEMORIES
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
PRESS BRIEFING BY LARRY SPEAKES
October 15, 1982
The Briefing Room
12:45pm EDT
Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement - the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?
MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS?
Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)
Q: No, I don't.
MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question.
Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President -
MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)
Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.
Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any -
Q: Nobody knows?
MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.
Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping -
MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no - (laughter) - no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.
Q: The President doesn't have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn't say that.
Q: Didn't say that?
MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there? (Laughter.)
Q: Because I love you Larry, that's why (Laughter.)
MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don't put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)
Q: Oh, I retract that.
MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.
Q: It's too late.
coriacci1
2013 May 18, 4:14am
February 28, 2013
Reagan aided Guatemalan genocide
Robert Parry, Consortium News. Soon after taking office in 1981, President Ronald Reagan’s national security team agreed to supply military aid to the brutal right-wing regime in Guatemala to pursue the goal of exterminating not only “Marxist guerrillas†but their “civilian support mechanisms,†according to a newly disclosed document from the National Archives.
Over the next several years, the military assistance from the Reagan administration helped the Guatemalan army do just that, engaging in the slaughter of some 100,000 people, including what a truth commission deemed genocide against the Mayan Indians in the northern highlands.
Vernon Walters, a former deputy director of the CIA who served as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador-at-large in the early 1980s.
Recently discovered documents at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, also reveal that Reagan’s White House was reaching out to Israel in a scheme to circumvent congressional restrictions on military equipment for the Guatemalan military.
In 1983, national security aide Oliver North (who later became a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal) reported in a memo that Reagan’s Deputy National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane (another key Iran-Contra figure) was approaching Israel over how to deliver 10 UH-1H helicopters to Guatemala to give the army greater mobility in its counterinsurgency war.
According to these documents that I found at the Reagan library – and other records declassified in the late 1990s – it’s also clear that Reagan and his administration were well aware of the butchery underway in Guatemala and elsewhere in Central America.
coriacci1
2013 May 18, 4:19am
BOTTOM LINE
The true costs of Reagan
and extreme capitalism
by Sam Smith
Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of that remarkable moment when this country began to turn its back on values that had sustained it throughout its first two centuries - values that included balancing power and wealth with concern for, cooperation with, and compassion towards others in the community we called America. In their place came a psychotic faith in the ubiquitous virtue of the market, a faith almost creationist in its absence of objective foundation, intellectually barren when not actually dishonest, and as monomaniacal as the creed of the religious fundamentalist. Every other aspect of existence - religion, family, morality, creativity, politics, community, tradition, ethnicity - was declared merely a byproduct of the marketplace.
True, America had always been a highly commercial culture. And it had gone through periods - such as that of the 19th robber barons or the 1920s - when its better nature was submerged or perverted by a corrupt culture of greed, but in these prior instances it had been generally clear who the true beneficiaries were and there had been little effort, even by these lucky few, to pretend, for example, that the luck of the Goulds, Carnegies or Rockefellers were but a tax cut away from the rest the country.
With Reagan, however, that all changed. For the first time in our history, the self-serving delusions of the privileged few became the standard for the whole nation, propagated in politics, on campuses and in the media. Even liberals would begin to adopt the language of extreme capitalism. Few asked for the evidence to support its thesis or examine critically its deceptive logic.
To give some sense of the cultural eruption that had occurred, consider some remarks from the 1960s. The first were delivered in 1964 by Lyndon Johnson:
Dan8267
2013 May 18, 4:27am
as long as you dont mention all the social programs which failed it
Name specific social program failures and their costs. Let's see if it adds up to the cost of the Vietnam War.
How much did the Vietnam War cost? In direct military spending, alone, Vietnam cost the U.S. $784 billion in fiscal year 2011 dollars. That does not include the cost of human life, the lost labor during and after the war (due to death), or the vast majority of the health care costs for veterans, which will peak around 2020-2025.
We're still paying for the Vietnam War every time we treat a Vietnam vet, and it's going to get a lot more expensive over the next decade. ...unless, of course, you cut all veteran social programs. Do you want to do that?
Dan8267
2013 May 18, 4:36am
Since when was Elizabeth Warren any expert at anything.. read here bio!
a one sided social activist.. thats it! what great company or industry did she create..
shit.. she is another idiot found in the teachers lounge from Obama University.
Warren was a Harvard Law School professor specializing in bankruptcy law after being a practicing lawyer for years. That means her credentials are way the fuck better than yours.
Nor have you done anything to discredit her work. I guess trying to do that would take too much reading.
Dan8267
2013 May 18, 4:41am
Ever work for a people like Donald Regan ? I did..
Donald Regan would sell your ass into slavery to profit for himself if he could get away with it. I guarantee you that he never gave a rat's ass if you lived or die.
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He kept us out of made up wars.
According to the Democrat logic, that they use for talking points, when asked to name one positive thing Obama has done.
It's nice to see them finally giving the gipper some credit where credit is due. At least Ronnie, didn't blame Carter for everything.
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