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Reganomics vs. Regan Lovers
By admin | March 3, 2010
It has occurred to me that not only is Rush Limba a Big Fat Idiot (which is a great book by the way) but people who keep bringing up Ronald Regan as the greatest president that ever lived are idiots as well. I hear from conservatives all the time that the Regan years were the best of times.
I remember Reganomics differently. I remember farms being sold off in the Midwest to the corporations. I remember free cheese. I remember a time before Regan when there were small farmers all over the country… where did they go? I also remember that he also asked a psychic before making any decision (this one is rumor but Nancy sure used her a lot). I wonder how your god felt about that one…
Regan was not as great as everyone makes him out to be and it was Carter that got the hostages out. Do you ever wonder why they were released right when Regan took office? Hmm was he working with Iran?
How about that Iran / Contra thing… Wasn’t it the Regan administration that ended up giving weapons or was it just our hard earned tax dollars to Iran? That sure worked out well for us didn’t it? I hate it when people ignore the whole picture of history or an era and just pick out the things they prefer to hear rather than all of the facts. This is how history changes all of the time.
If you look at a flat map it shows you where the continents are and how they look but it is not accurate. If you look at a globe it shows you a closer look at how things really are. People like looking at history as if it was a flat map. They like the idea that Greenland is massive in size even though it is not. They like to pull out the bits and pieces that reinforce their beliefs rather than actually looking at everything as a whole. The Good the Bad and the Ugly.
Here are the points I like to pull out from Regan. If you want to hear the positive sides just tune in to the fat man to the radio.
Here are some of Ronald Regan’s dumber quotes…
* “It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?”
Certainly sounds like a government employee…
* “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.”
Yep and it keeps getting bigger…
* “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency — even if I’m in a Cabinet meeting.”
I would be sleeping as well…
* “Well, I learned a lot….I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and (learn) their views. You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries”
No I would not be surprised and our president certainly should know a bit about geography…
* “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles.”
Uh, what the hell are they polluting?…
* “All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”
I know a few desks that could certainly use this feature of toxic waste…
* “The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.”
What??? If we are going to subsidize something lets make it intellectual curiosity…
* “Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.”
Uh, that is nature. It is we we are adding that is making the difference. The methane stored in the currently melting permafrost has been there for millions of years. It is being released because of us not nature…
* “We are trying to get unemployment to go up, and I think we’re going to succeed.”
Yep, you sure did…
* “What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”
The people there by choice are what .001%. It is those that are there not by choice that need a had…
*** OK, OK that was unfair and maybe out of context. How about the people who interacted with him directly during those years. How about the foreign dignitaries, ambassadors and even family from that time? Here are some of their quotes on their feelings about him.
“I never knew anything above Cs.”
–President Reagan, in a moment of truthfulness, describes his academic record to Barbara Walters, November 27, 1981
“They told stories about how inattentive and inept the President was…. They said he wouldn’t come to work–all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence.”
–Jim Cannon (an aide to Howard Baker) reporting what Reagan’s underlings told him, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President: 1984-88
“Reagan’s only contribution [to the subject of the MX missile] throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he’d watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution.”
–Lee Hamilton (Representative from Indiana) interviewed by Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years
“This President is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if he were a child…. It is major news when he honors a political or economic discussion with a germane remark and not an anecdote about his Hollywood days.”
–Columnist Richard Cohen
“What planet is he living on?”
–President Mitterand of France poses this question about Reagan to Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau.
“During Mr. Reagan’s trip to Europe…members of the traveling press corps watched him doze off so many times–during speeches by French President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope–that they privately christened the trip ‘The Big Sleep.’”
–Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency
“He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts.”
–David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist
“an amiable dunce”
–Clark Clifford (former Defense Secretary)
“Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears.”
–British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
“…like reinventing the wheel.”
–Larry Speakes (Reagan’s former press secretary) describing what it was like preparing the President for a press conference, Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House
“The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan’s ears is a challenging one for his aides.”
–Columnist David Broder
“He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless”
–Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father, The Way I See It
“This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor.”
–Mark Green, Reagan’s Reign of Error
“President Reagan doesn’t always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing.”
–former president Jimmy Carter, March 6, 1984
“Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy.”
–James David Barber, presidential scholar, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, Mark Hertsgaard
“His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point…he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year.”
–Simon Hoggart, in The Observer (London), 1986
Yep, he was just as great as Dubya but better in front of the camera.
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