Oh can you believe it was only a hundred years ago when Ronald Reagan was born? Which side of the Civil War did he fight on, anyway? (Answer: He didn’t fight at all, but he was an extra at the Ford Theater the night Lincoln was shot, and later claimed to have played the role of Robert E. Lee in James Joyce’s movie Ulysses S. Grant.) Oh, also, back in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was actually serving as president in some weird state of constant incapacitation? Everybody thought he was a moron. Most Republicans didn’t even support him during the regular lows of his disastrous two terms. He also didn’t defeat the Soviet Union — they ran out of money on their own, just like we’ve done here in America in the past 10 years, in the exact same Central Asian country. But Ronald Reagan did delight America with his constant, idiotic appearances on film and television. Let’s remember the empty suit who led us to a Promised Land of Fox News, Tax Cuts for Multi-Billionaires and the deliberate dismantling of what had been the world’s smartest, most prosperous society in the History of the World.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that Ronald Reagan and his famously fake “sunny disposition” could be turned on like a faucet for any purpose. Freedom, some kind of hand soap, whatever!
Doubt us? Here’s Reagan making a powerful argument (complete with folksy bullshit story) about how corporate profits are soaring and oil companies are price gouging and poor old working people are getting screwed. (He made this recording in 1948.)
And here is the White House astrologer who decided when Reagan could have a press conference, or when he might have a summit with the Russians or whatever. Family Values/Jesus!
Ronald Reagan: Beneath that smiling old fool facade was a vicious, sneering vulgarian.
And here’s the bumbling war criminal’s testimony in federal court during the trial of John Poindexter, Reagan’s own National Security Advisor, who was convicted of five felonies for his Iran-Contra crimes and would have vanished into shameful obscurity had George W. Bush not brought him out of “retirement” to spy on Americans during the post-9/11 insanity.
Watch this smarmy, half-senile liar “address the nation” after the entire White House was caught red-handed arming terrorists and funding death squads. These people dripped evil. Never forget.
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"the deliberate dismantling of what had been the world’s smartest, most prosperous society in the History of the World"
What did Reagan do to Switzerland? I must have missed something.
Obama must not agree
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/11/20/channeling-the...
Ah, good old Switzerland where they don't like muslins or Dubya. Bush visit to Geneva canceled after protest threat
"With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me."
They don't like Jewish art connoisseurs either — unless their art is gold or green with presidential portraits on it.
I thought he was talking about Egypt.
Let's all take a moment to pause and appreciate the irony of our troll du jour, who elsewhere decries the media as being "state-run" and "slanted towards leftists," using an opinion piece by Howard Fineman in Newsweek (and a damned hacky piece of writing too, which is saying something) to try and prove a point about Obama in some way agreeing with Reagan that America is just totes awesome?
Let's also further appreciate that the piece the troll links to in no way supports his thesis, as it is about Obama adopting some of Reagan's style, not his policies, and in fact towards the end of the piece Fineman encourages Obama to adopt a Reagan-esque foreign policy, which in Fineman's opinion Obama has not actually done, thus pretty much invalidating further the troll's attempt at making a point?
Keep fucking that chicken, troll.
Oh crap!! I'd hoped Goatbeck (or whatever), was banned.
Kennnnnnn!
Could there ever be a more fitting tribute to the "Gipper"? I don't think so.
I'm going to have say, "Fuck You Ronald Reagan. Fuck you, and the horse you pretended to ride in on."
And if you spend a buck or few on "The Clothes Have No Emperor" you can learn even more fun facts about St. Ronnie!
I'm picking up a "Ken does not admire Ronald" kind of vibe here. After witnessing our national month-long collective funerary deathfap back in 2004, I'm kind of surprised that mindset is still legal here in Amereagan.
Someone explain to me how a former actor turned politician who was not universally beloved, contrary to the myth, became St. Ronnie. Psychologists everywhere need to figure out a way to put this in the intro psych books along with all the other preventable disasters.
Compare this to Lenin and Kim Il Sung. It's got to be the same carefully crafted machinery at work. Or perhaps, the similarity between sheep brains and human brains is more than just a similarity. They sure do look similar and act similar under certain conditions.
[Important psych note: When I was an undergrad, we used sheep brains to ID parts of the brain. Do you still do that?]
We used sheep brains when I was an undergraduate but the guy in our department who teaches Physio doesn't. Not sure why. You need all sorts of hoods and safety stuff to work with formaldehyde maybe. WhenI was in college you worked with bare hands and could take your sheep brain home over the weekend. I remember that there was this HUGE area for olfaction, for judgment and reasoning not so much.
BTW, Anyone who wants to reduce their food intake should try dissecting something in formaldehyde. That smell soaks into your fingertips, rendering you unable to eat anything except by a fork or spoon. That eliminates most junk food.
PsycWench: Take a look at the Media Matters post from the author of "Tear Down This Myth." It becomes plain the Reagan myth was a very well-crafted lie – and this post helped me understand how the dirty deed was done.
I read it on Washington Post this morning. It was very revealing, and even more so the comments on the story. Many of them amounted to sticking fingers in one's ear and chanting "La la la I can't hear you"!
We psychologists can offer the explanation that the average IQ is 100 (by definition), and half the population is below that. I don't have a solution to recommend for that.
Mistakes were made.
Yes. Who says it's wrong to use the passive voice? Here's a massive counterexample.
The passive voice should be avoided.
Ask the people he ratted out to the House UnAmerican Activities Commission how much they lurve Ole Ronnie.
HUAC
HUAC
They're just lookin' out for guys like you and me.
They are proud to be regarded
As politically retarded
Men of unimpeachable in-teg-ri-tee.
He made the plutocrats richer. And that's been going on for over 30 years straight.
So they reinvest some proceeds in the Reagan myth, some in consolidating the corporate media, some in creating the teabagger 'grassroots' movement.
What Carlin said.
~
You might want to take a peek at "Essays on Contemporary Events" by Carl Gustav Jung (easy read, just 100 pages.). In this overlooked gem, he discusses the mass psychology that led to the rise of Nazism in post WWI Germany.
After that little tidbit, take a gander at "Propaganda," by Edward Bernays (nephew of Freud, and the very definition of what a modern "liberal" really is. Hint: You are probably not one). Complete at: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop….
Chomsky on Bernays: "The propaganda system of the first World War and this commission that he was part of showed, he says, it is possible to 'regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies.' These new techniques of regimentation of minds, he said, had to be used by the intelligent minorities in order to make sure that the slobs stay on the right course. We can do it now because we have these new techniques."
Jeebus, Bernays' opening paragraph:
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
I don't know whether to start drinking or throw myself in the frozen ocean. I guess I'll go watch TV.
I don't know whether to start drinking or throw myself in the frozen ocean.
Where's the Ice-Nine when you need it?
Since my heyday happened in the Reagan years (college, rock bands, copious amounts of booze, drugs and interesting friends, week-long vacays to Banff, Hawaii, Mexico, etc) I have very fond memories; those will last a lifetime.
It's a rose tinted filter, I admit. These days I like to look back and wistfully remember that Ronald Reagan was probably only the 2nd worst president in the history of our great nation.
The greatest achievement of George Bush (the younger): to make Ronald Reagan look clever!
Amazingly, the Republican Party is so crazy and moronic that you find yourself pondering the idea that in comparison, Reagan wasn't that bad. Like you'll have an argument with somebody and say things like "but he raised taxes about seven times because he did make an effort to stop the deficit and he didn't vilify the opposition" and then you go take a long shower, have a couple of shots of whiskey and cry yourself to sleep.
I thought that was what Senile Saint Ronnie Inhibitors were for.
While I blame W for the bullet in my son's head, Reagan made W possible, if not mandatory. We've been seriously fucked since then.
I do wish the D's would learn how to make science interesting because bullshit outsells it every day of the week. Jimmy Carter wanted us to wear sweaters, but Reagan had us turning the thermostat way up as if we'd never run out of energy. And who could forget James Watt who believed his mission was to use up all the resources so Jesus would return. Such people should be hospitalized, but Reagan emptied those hospitals, too.
See if you can find the David Levine caricature that appeared in The New York Review of Books. It showed Ron and Nancy mounted on two horses, from the perspective of the back end of the horses, with very much attention focused on the back ends of the horses. That just about says it all.
http://books.google.com/books?id=s-cDAAAAMBAJ&...
Thanks. Apparently, the sketch has a title: "Two assholes riding off into the sunset."
How did Mathew Brady get that picture of Ron in his underpants?
he tore down a sea wall
What he lacked in principles he made up in asshattery.
Sainthood is a fickle thing…and being dead to enjoy it is against all I live for.
Your post hadn't registered yet when I posted, OC. Great minds, and all that…
Let the hagiography begin (again)!
"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
"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
"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
"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
the press accepts this as kind of amusing.
This is the root of the problem. The press did the same thing with Bush II. Yet Gore, Dean, Kerry, Obama, etc., were punished for every minor slip of the tongue.
"If he gets even more sedate, we will have to water him twice a week. " Molly Ivins, on Reagan
EDIT: Was thumbing thru my copy of Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? and found these other Reagan comments, also, too:
"It's such a fun admininistration–half of it is under average, and the other half is under indictment"
It's been said for months now that when we got to the bottom of the Iran-contra mess, we'd find out the president was either a fool or a liar. According to Admiral John Poindexter, he's both…He could just wear a button that said THE BUCK STOPPED BEFORE IT GOT HERE."
"If the man had a brain, he'd play with it."
"The charm of Ronald Reagan is not just that he kept telling us screwy things, it was that he believed them all. No wonder we trusted him, he never lied to us. That patented Reagan ability to believe what he wants to–damn the facts, full speed ahead–gave the entire decade its Alice in Wonderland quality. You just never knew what the president would take into his head next–or what odd things were already lurking in there."
"All who have been saved from drugs by Nancy Reagan, please raise your hands. Thank you."
fuck how I loved Molly Ivins, she was one of the first 'jourmalists' I recognized as knowing what was really fucking happening with these fucktards, and she did it with the sharpest wit and the most delightful commentary…thanks for remindin me how much I loved Miss Molly!
One of the nice things about looking through my copy of Can't Say That was finding the program from her visit to Boise in 2003, shortly after the start of the Iraq war. In this painfully red state, she was a breath of fresh air, and, as ever, an inspiration to keep raising hell. It was a fundraiser for the ACLU, of which she said "The only trouble with civil libertarians as a group is that we tend to be a sober lot. Probably because the Bill of Rights is always being beset by blue-bellied, full-blooded nincompoops, many of whom hold elected office. Still, I think we might be more famous for our joie de vivre if we weren't always out-manned and out-gunned."
She was one of the best kinds of human beings, a tough-minded optimist, and we need a hell of a lot more people like her.
Amen, it's hard to think of someone like Molly in the media these days although I do think Rachel Maddow does an admirable job of speaking truth to power while also using a sharp wit and exceptional observation of the political animals ruining our cuntry…not sure if they ever met but I believe Molly would appreciate and enjoy Rachel's arguments and perspective, great minds think alike!
If Maggie thought Reagan was an idiot how fucking evil does that make her for going along with his bullshit policies?
Yes, the Blair-Bush poodle phenomenon wasn't anything new.
thanks reminding me all over again why I hated this asshole/ puppet/ war criminal so much, I was only 19 when he was 'elected' but even then could spot a phony asshat right away…and I immediately recognized the mentally retarded Bush puppet as just one MORE Repig puppet selected to do his masters' bidding…fuck all these fuckers!
Gawd, and that came from Maggie Thatcher of all people. She was like Bush's Tony Blair, only consciously/willfully evil and sadistic.
Ken, now that you've done all this to help us remember Reagan, can you post something to help us forget?
The fact that ANYONE looks on this wrinkled evil toad with anything other than bile-induced vomiting is testament to humanity's capacity for depravity. How about a bit of math, you Reagan-pustules?
El Salvador: 70,000 massacred.
Nicaragua: 80,000 massacred.
Guatemala: 250,000 massacred.
In reference to the architect of the most horrific slaughter carried out by the butcher Rios Montt, our national hero said this:
"President Rios Montt [is] a man of great personal integrity and commitment who wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans, and [is] getting a 'bum rap' on human rights."
The worms that are eating this dead bastard's corpse are undoubtedly becoming sick. We should perhaps thank them for their sacrifice.
Oh, user-of-owls, I'm pretty sure you underestimated El Salvador and Nicaragua about 30K each, but the googles are bearing you out. Hmph.
Funny – though Reagan/Bush I denied knowledge of the SOA-trained Atlacatl Batallion's genocidal war crimes (http://is.gd/y0x5fM), even calling one survivor "a liar," Oliver North's book, 1992 "Courage Under Fire," describes VP Bush visiting El Salvador to discuss the death squads. It was published in 1992, two years before the USA "found out" about them.
And that filthy John Negroponte, in charge of Honduras and the Contra training camps – when Hondurans complained, Hondurans disappeared. The Contra training? They didn't even map landmines, and used a strategy of systematic rape to dissuade young teachers from the rural literacy campaign. Nice guy, that Negroponte. Bush 2 put him in charge of Homeland Security.
Sheesh, only two members of Bush's original cabinet – Rumsfeld and Rice – weren't Iran-Contra insiders. Even Ghorbanifar, the Iranian sleaze who justified the Iraq Occupation with "yellowcake uranium" lies was a key Iran-Contra war criminal.
Thank God the Bush 2 administration failed at whatever they were trying to do. Thank God. Even in their failure, they may still have destroyed us, but at least their incompetence left us with a fighting chance. Sorry, no snarks.
Hey, now–let's not forget some of the stuff on the positive side of the ledger. He freed Grenada.
Freed them up so they could continue to collect tuition from all the students who can't get into U.S. medical schools.
thanks for reminding me what an evil fuck Raygun and his puppet masters were…I almost had softened my view of the asshole since it was determined he was far along his Alzheimer's journey before his second term, and then I remembered that they din't fucking care at all and let him continue as 'leading man'…it sickens my stomach all over again remembering how these the murdering fucks got away with ALL OF IT!
Rios Montt claimed to be born-again, too, and got lots of support in his massacres from US evangelical missionaries.
Ask Obama, he is invoking him.
you know, to be provocative, you should have at least a kernel of some thought….sorry….just thought you should know that just saying anything (ala Palin) doesn't count….
I think our retarded trollish friend is trying to push the same line he's pushed elsewhere, in which he conflates Obama's adoption of some of the Gipper's rhetorical tricks and style with an adoption of Reagan's policies. Obviously only a total moron would see said adoption as some sort of conservative triumphalism, but since the rest of his posts around here are fairly incoherent it should not surprise anyone.
Ah, the "Buyer's Remorse" schtick.
*Alzheimer's permitting.
Ah, it is comforting that the Repug's shining icon is a pussy whipped, senile, bullet ridden, moron war criminal.
I really hope it hurt Gipper, the way you made the innocents hurt.
How's hell Ronnie?
Burn baby burn you ketchup is a vegatable mother fucker.
Strike "bullet ridden." It makes him look heroic.
This, to sign off on a Friday afternoon? Jeez, Ken. Can't we have some frolicking kitten videos, or maybe that rainbow guy? Hell, just give us the "snow" that used to follow the sign-off playing of the national anthem at 2 in the morning.
How about the Crying Santorums? That always works for me.
Jeebus, Ken, you don't have to remind THE COMMENTARIAT OF DOOM that Reagan was a pandering jackass. But thanks!
Actually, Ken, I try to forget the buffoon and the debauchery that surrounded him. But it's hard, oh so hard.
♬ Maybe partying will help ♬
Raygun seemed kind of cool in 1948 before his brain went bad.
I believe that was back when he and Gary Cooper were "sharing" a Hollywood bungalow.
Here's to him burning in hell right now. He was such an antichrist. He was a powerful specimen of a man though. Reagan's man boobs are so hawt also too you betcha yep. Do you think he looks a little like an aged Tawd Palin?
This is off topic, but hey http://twitpic.com/3wiqyy
One does not simply wank into Mordor.
Ugh, now I'm going to have that in my browser history mixed in with my nice clean porn.
You can file it between the cuckold husband and the furry porn.
It's a monkey! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zHN4vCfwh4
If you are as tired as I am of hearing and reading that President Reagan won the Cold War, check this out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/so...
Well written, logical, factual, well-reasoned – and not one mention could I find of President Ronald Reagan.
Ask the old Soviets about the idea that Mr. Reagan beat them by bankrupting them in the Cold War and you get that Whiskey Tango Foxtwat look.
As for Iran-Contra, did President Reagan know about it? His wife says No. Col. Ollie North says Yes. Who's right?
Undoubtedly they're both right. Ollie told Ronnie about it, but Ronnie already had Alzhiemer's, so he promptly forgot.
But $arah told me that Kennedy won the cold war by bankrupting the Russians in a doughnut eating contest. (Winner had to buy.)
So, as it happens, Soviet Union bankrupts YOU, US America!
Ask the astrologer!
Yes, but who asked Mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wall? Would that wall have come down if Mondale won in '84? Ted Kennedy said it? I don't think so.
When I was a kid we just watched "Not Necessarily the News". It covered Reagan, US News and the World News.
That and naked Sarah Conner in Terminator were the best things about HBO/cable. And George Carlin stand-up specials.
Since Boehner, et.al. are busy focusing on important things like repealing Health Care and redefining rape, here's a bug to put in their collective asses: declare that November 19th is national Ronnie Ray gun day and make it Federal holiday. The irony of this date is that its also World Toilet Day
http://www.worldtoilet.org/wtd/
If the legislation is passed and signed into law, I suggest eating a plate of corned beef with hash and drinking a 5th of Jack Daniels. The next day you can celebrate by taking a pleasurable bowel movement while thinking "thank you Ronnie Raygun."
I had all but forgotten what it was like before cable and we'd have that face plastered on all six or seven channels.
I guess I never thought of St. Ronnie as evil, more as a tragicomic dupe/puppet played by Nixon's and other conservative cronies. I don't credit him with enough intelligence to be evil, he just played a friendly old "patriot" that started this country diving down into its death spiral. Compare and contrast to Dubya, who was just smart enough to be evil, still dumb enough to be duped. Dumb versus dumb and mean as fuck. One would fuck you with a confused grin, the other would fuck you with a sneer and a slap on the ass and a "who's yer daddy?".
I remember when I was a small boy in Los Angeles seeing Reagan on TV and just becoming aware of politics in our country. I remember laying on the floor in the living room watching this guy when my mom went by on her way to mix herself a drink and saw what I was looking at. As she mixed her drink from behind the wet bar she told me, "Son, you see that man there running for governor? Don't forget, son. That fellow there, that actor fellow… Don't imagine for a moment that this guy hasn't sucked a cock. And he's going to be the first President we know of who without any doubt whatsoever has sucked a cock. And more than one too. Moms know these things. This man has sucked a cock."
We all know Nancy was apparently very skilled in that area as well. Maybe they compared notes.
Your mom rocks!
I guess a mother always knows!
The first, without any doubt? Now how am I going to sell all these James Buchanan bobble-head dolls?
I don't believe that story. I simply don't believe it.
But you want to.
Admit it.
I want to believe it so badly it hurts.
I need to make a declaration here – I hereby swear on my life and the lives of my children that this is what my mother told me when I was a small boy.
Then that is one fucking cool mother to have used the word cock in front of you at such a young age.
"And what's more," she said in a stage whisper, "he's divorced!"
Gary Cooper, right?
P.S. Nice prose.
Somewhere Ronnie is saying to himself "That is NOT TRUE! I NEVER sucked a cock!
Sure, I put a few in my mouth and rolled them around a little, yeah, but that's different".
He never inhaled.
Nice job Ken. I watched all the videos. If the nightmares start again I will blame you.
Monsieur, the only thing worse is to play them all at once.
Twenty mule team Borax. That's all I've got.
Here's what I remember about St. Ronnie's rule. We spent a shit-pot full of tax dollars on Star Wars defense programs that did not yield a single program that had a deployable technology. It was all cartoon stuff, in the vein of Captain America comix.
Actually, it was Cap who revealed that Reagan was an evil lizard-man, while the "respectable" media spent the decade milking his cock.
Yes, of all his evil sidekicks, Edward Teller was possibly Reagan's most evil sidekick. While Poindexter, North and others were engineering medium sized banana republic massacres, Teller was swinging for the fences…nuclear armageddon or GTFO.
And what's the rightwing conventional wisdom on Star Wars? That it bankrupted the Soviet military machine when they tried to match it, which is 100 percent complete bullshit. The Soviets responded to their real fears of our vaporware antimissile program by negotiating nuclear arms reductions, which SAVED them money and probably delayed the collapse of the USSR. The only foreign policy thing Reagan did that ever made any sense was to respond to the Soviets' basing of medium-range missiles in the Warsaw Pact with Pershings and cruise missiles of our own in Europe. That led to a treaty that eliminated that class of weapon, and was kind of a no-brainer.
Not completely true. Star Wars did produce the Patriot Air Defense System.
Lord, I'm about as tired of seeing his old mug as I am Snowbilly's. Only consolation is I'll miss his 200th birthday celebration!
I believe it was Judy Tenuda who observed that Nancy ("Mommy") Reagan looked like a stop sign with a perm.
Man, I miss Judy Tenuda. (Yes, I know she's probably still around somewhere.)
I would have expected her to land in Vegas, where all the other aging acts go to die, but I was wrong, according to judytenuta.com
DUDE! You buried the lead (lede?). On Judy's website, she ALSO does parody videos of Sarah Palin, and she actually looks a lot like Sarah Palin. It's terrifying, really.
My only problem with Judy Tenuta? Mention of her inevitably leads to Emo Phillips, and that is a line that I just will not cross.
Grandpa Caligula
Don't forget his record on AIDS: Not a public word out of his mouth on the topic until it had killed more people in America alone than the Vietnam War.
OMG, the Vietnam war was in America? I could've been killed!
Once upon a time my boss, who comes from an ethos where everyone is a Republican and just argue about what kind, asked me with genuine bewilderment how a presumably smart guy like me was not a fan of his party. Didn't have to work on formulating an answer – just came out – 'because ketchup is not a vegetable"
But trees DO cause pollution
I prefer to celebrate the day of his death, June 5th.
I once had a pretty nice gig, under federal contract. When he won the presidency, he cut the contract we had with the National Parks Service but continued the mandate. My wages were slashed by more than half, so I quit. The company failed within a year. Thanks, guy.
When he died, I worked for the state of California. I got the day of his funeral off with pay. That's the only good that ever came out of him and his trumped up legacy for me. Oddly, I got a phone call asking me if I'd go to work just to hoist the flag and lower it to half-staff. I passed, proudly.
Just Say No!
"Naked reagan"? That might even get you more hits than "sarah palin upskirt."
Thank you Ken. Thank you for reminding me that I grew up world’s smartest, most prosperous society and now live in what is fast becoming a third world shitheap. I will be over in that corner banging my head against the wall in the hope of feeling a little better when I stop.
In most 3rd world countries, you at least have strong families, whose members help each other out; not in Reagan-stan!
I'm so glad he's still dead. That'll cheer me up for the rest of my life.
What galls me is the sheeple trying to turn him into the new Abe Lincoln for the GOP. It's National Airport, dammit.
I refuse to refer to it as anything Reagan. And it's no surprise that it's the place where I was pulled out of line and hyper-searched as I was flying to assist my family post Hurricane. Apparently a late 40s white girl flying to a known hurricane-destroyed locale with the rubber gloves, duck boots and tampons in her bag spells TERRORIST. Good times.
Is this Hundred Years of Ronbo a neocon version of Finnegan's Wake? Will Ronnie be like Finn McCool and start getting reincarnated time-after-time, but instead of Finn-again, it would Raygun-regurgitation? Do we need to get out the oak stakes and wolfbane?
Why did they drill holes in Reagan's casket? So the worms could crawl out to puke.
Ah the Legacy. In the words of Dick Cheney, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We don't deal with terrorists, unless they are Iranian and their money will fund the contras. Two trillion in deficits when a trillion was real money. Also, he had his picture taken with a young, skanky Coulter.
In 1980, I was 13 years old, and it was the first Presidential election I kinda understood what was going on.
Honest to God, I still remember the terrible feeling of doom and sadness I felt when he won the election. Even then, in my newly born youthful liberal naïveté, I knew he was evil, and we were totally screwed.
My political awakening was this man's election. I was nine. I know exactly what you mean. I'm sure much of my anxiety came from my liberal parents' observations. Plus the constant dreaded fear of nuclear war.
My liberal parents got old, went through 9/11 NYC, and turned into "Obama's a socialist Muslim!" nuts.
And my own husband is of the "Why should the rich have to pay more in taxes to support lazy people?" crowd. We don't talk politics much. I actually have been avoiding Wonkette, and NYT pages so I don't bang my head against the wall sobbing uncontrollably. It scares my kids. (who will grow up good liberal youths btw.)
wow, don't know how you can do it 'toots…I had ONE date ONE time with a Republican woman and before the main course was already thinking of how to escape the overwhelming stupidity of her 'conservative' views before dinner ended…just the thought of being married to someone who thinks like that makes my brain hurt…also
Oh dear. Best of luck to you always. I can't imagine how hard that is–we have some friends like that; different ends of the political spectrum, married for years, and I still don't know how they do it.
I'm fortunate that my hubby is as Commie-Pinko-Muslin as me. In that arrogant parlance of the right, conservatives would tell us that we would 'change sides' when we got older, but oh how wrong they have been. Our hearts have grown wider, not shriveled up Cheney-style. My best to you.
And I hope you keep coming around–this place offers a world of sanity and snark and (yes) trucknutz for all of us.
So was mine! I do admit as a 9-year-old boy I was quite swept away with Reagan. What a colorful guy, so easy to summon up a picture of what we ought to be, all cowboys and farmers and hard working persons who never backed down and such.
But, I grew up. He didn't, and neither did the rest of the nation.
My political awakening was during the 2000 election. I remember writing an editorial for my conservative (private) school's newspaper about the controversy surrounding the election. It made it into the paper, but apparently, it wasn't conservative because I heard about it from everyone. I remember getting it proof-read by the teacher and it was all marked up with read ink. It was basically the first time in a social setting that I realized what liberal and conservative was.
So long as we're all sharing (and it is nice)…During the 80's I was enduring Reagan while in college and while avidly following world politics through one particularly narrow, or well focused, lense: "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" (http://www.thebulletin.org/) , they of the famous "Doomsday Clock". It was a testament to Reagan's widely acknowledged "maverickyness" that in those days the primary news media did pay attention to what that clock read. Nuclear holocaust seemed like a very real possibility back then.
I was in first grade in '80 and we had an election and as I grew up in the Main Line amidst old money and WASPS, I was one of three people to vote for Carter. I was even interviewed in the local paper and gave as my reason why I didn't vote for him because I thought he was going to blow the world up. So, I was wrong about that literally but right metaphorically. One of my proudest moments, actually.
We are the same age, and like you I also despised St Ronnie from the get-go. My "best" friend in middle and high school adored that old fart. She was so thrilled when he became president – said he reminded her of her grandfather. I told her I loved my grandpa too, but he was forgetful and slow and not any more fit to be president than this idiot. That didn't make her very happy. She had pictures of St Ron on her wall where pimply-faced pop stars should have been. She also had a thing for Bruce Springsteen, so when I pointed out that the lyrics for Born in the USA were not what she thought, she refused to believe it. There was no inter-tubes back then, so proving that Bruce was less than thrilled with Regan's use of his song was damn near impossible. But, for the right's mindset, then and now, it doesn't matter – facts are stupid things.
I don't know why y'all are harshin' on ol' Ronnie at this momentous point in his history — why I even feel a little sorry for him myself. I'm sure at the time of his leaving office — after cutting taxes for the rich, slashing aid to states, creating a missile defense shield that has kept us safe to this very day by us merely running failed tests of it, funding the Contras through arms sales to Iran while insisting he didn't negotiate with terrorists, mining the Nicaraguan shoreline, murdering 243 American Marines by placing them in an unguarded barracks in a valley surrounded by hostile militas and then pulling out immediately after said barracks was bombed, directly contravening every single word of his tough talk, conducting so few press conferences that it was clear by the beginning of his second term that he was distant and isolated — well after all that he probably though he'd go down in history as the most idiotic, reason-averse, evidence-phobic, uncurios, blatantly hypocritical, falsely-pious, flag-fetishistic, superficially optimistic, unsympathetic, narcissitic human being ever to run a superpower ever. And now, only twenty years later, he's just number two.
fucking WIN! (as usual you just a special way of summing up such things)
I wish I were smart, I'd program a billion bots to quote you on every conservative blog they could spider.
Yeah, we thought Reagan meant we were doomed, and we were right: Shrub was elected right on schedule to finish the job.
Funny, how we don't talk about Shrub Sr. much. And way funnier, is that THEY NEVER talk about him either. What, with all that tax raising, peace dividend, compassion talk — and the the fucker won a quick military action. Do you think maybe it's more about militarism than actually accomplishing a foreign policy goal?
Pres. Palin will put him in third place!
Oh SayIt, you fucking rule. A million up-thumbs.
Reagan took office about a decade after the serious class war began, but he was the first U.S. President to proudly wave the flag of the wealthy against everyone else. He was the anti-FDR posing as Everyman. For a representative reminder of that twisted era, remember the film "True Stories": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092117/.
I do take some comfort in understanding that the country eventually rejected W in a way it never really did Reagan.
Born a hundred years ago? Does this mean Twilight is the Ronald-Nancy story?
Nancy DID look like skeletor…
Let's look at the positives: he did get us out of Lebanon.
And he supported the Contras, who were exactly like the Founding Fathers
…get us bombed out of Lebanon.
/fixed
Yeah, but Ronbo put more whitewash on that episode than Tom Sawyer coulda.
The bombing of the barracks killed 220 Marines, the Corps largest single day loss since Iwo Jima in the Second World War. Even today both the tactical and strategic lessons learned from the bombing the Marine barracks seem to have been unlearned and there seems to be a fog around many who should know the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking.
Dude, that was serious sarcasm. Like someone else upthread saying "Hey, he liberated Grenada!"
"Mr. Gorbachev, tongue-punch me in my fart box."
Awwww. Aren't you guys all cute and sweet parsing history to learn lessons? I remember when people used to do that.
On another note: I was 20 at the time of the hearings. I remember thinking, along with a lot of other people, that Raygun had essentially declared himself a failure. To this day, "cannot recall" still gives me pangs. I was young enough then to still harbor faith in the myth.
But come now, does no one 35 or older, give or take, remember that 11th-hour cloud of disgrace? I know you do.
And yet, here we are.
We're still crying about it and lose our ability to speak every time we see Oliver North frolicking on FOX as if it never happened.
I was born during this guy's second term, and really have no memory of him. What I do have memories of are the great cult movie classics of the period that bled into the 90's like Gremlins (and Gremlins 2), and every other movie that showed New York City as if it were Gotham City. I really wish I were a live to see the declined NYC. But, I digress.
Of course he didn't know about Iran/Contra; he didn't know about anything. While he was a man without principle, without a soul and one willing to believe any gross falsehood that appealed to him, he was also profoundly stupid.
Those running him in the White House must have realized early that it was much easier simply not to tell him about some egregious crime rather than go to the trouble of making up something for him and then trying to keep him on message.
He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see
He tries to tell me what I put inside of me
He's got the answers to ease my curiosity
He dreamed a God up and called it Christianity
Your God is dead and no one cares
If there is a hell I will see you there
He flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line
He made a virus that would kill off all the swine
His perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain
Demands devotion atrocities done in His name
Your God is dead and no one cares
Drowning in His own hypocrisy
And if there is a hell I will see you there
Naked Raygun: TREASON
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0TkWeTaHQs
Piss on you, I'm workin for Naked Raygun!
"Everybody thought he was a moron."
They were right.
And don't forget the time he laid a wreath at the graves of Waffen SS in Bitburg, honoring the memory of those brave Nazis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8m2LpYGV0E
'I have just come from the cemetery where German war dead lay at rest. No one could visit here without deep and conflicting emotions…The evil world of Nazism turned all values upside down. Nevertheless, we can mourn the German war dead today as human beings, crushed by a vicious ideology."
So you see, really, there were victims all around. Including, somehow, Sarah Palin.
Correction: First and foremost Sarah Palin.
Hell, Ronnie KILLED them damn nazis buried there…
Have you noticed all the Nazi revisionism going on? Pretty soon, Hitler will be just like your misunderstood, wacky uncle.
Reagan probably wasn't the first shadow president and certainly was not the last.
Oh, for another good, contemporary look at Ronald, patron saint of plutocrats, try to find a copy of "Reagan's Reign of Error," a compilation with fact checking/refutation of all the lies/deliberate misrepresentations/complete fiction that Reagan spouted during his campaign and presidency. After only a couple of years of Reagan's first term (and later updated) Mark Green was able to amass a fairly thick book, with only brief explanations of when and where Reagan spewed each lie or myth.
An excerpt from a review of the book:
As for greatest President of the 20th century, sorry, but Reagan was one of the worst–he stood by while AIDS became a plague that would take 25,000 American lives during his tenure alone; illegally funded the Contras by selling arms to Iran (and lied about it until the facts wouldn't let him); supported death squads in Central America that committed such noble acts as raping nuns (to which Reagan claimed the rapists were acting in self-defense); poisoning America's political discourse by making it okay to slime and smear opponents at will; making it cool to be a racist again with his "welfare queens" mantra; raping the environment so the rich could get richer; shifting the tax burden mostly to the middle class, who, like idiots, all but thanked him for it; expanding the government into a bigger entity than it had ever been; running up record deficits; removing the Fairness Doctrine from our airwaves and thereby opening them for rabidly partisan hate speech; and–oh yeah–selling biological and chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein.
Thanks for the excerpt Dr. Radio! I'm going to go shove some soldering picks into my eyes now.
I was a teenager when Reagan was shot and I remember asking classmates "is he dead?" in that hopeful, rising intonation our friends to the North use. Then everyone looked at me sideways for weeks …
President Ronald Reagan, Press Secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a DC police officer… __Oh yeah, another way of expressing our distaste for this Aktor
Another good one is The Acting President, which details a lot of the behind-the-scenes players who spoke for Reagan and fought bitterly about what he wanted, since he never actually said much.
In the original language, this post is titled Cien años de senilidad.
Thank You Ken, for putting it much more succinctly than I. I'm glad some other people remember that bumbling, evil, assholian fool for what he really was. He laid the groundwork for the Republican Presidential model with his stupidity, arrogance and ability to lie to push forth the heartless, soulless agenda of the modern Repug.
I was living with evil Commies at the time and remember a blessed childhood except for stories of my grandmother in Auschwitz and that unfortunate incident when the hospital ran out of incubators and I almost died.
We knew the Commies were on their way out but had no idea Reagan had a thing to do with it.
Boy do I miss those Reagan days when we knew who the enemy was, exactly where they lived and women had big shoulders and pubic hair…
. . . long before there was a waxing trend to completely pass them by.
What Obama has learned is that Raygun's sunny optimism in the face of certain doom wins votes and raises poll numbers. Obama is now pushing the Rs into the box Reagan had the Ds — angry obstructionists. Sadly, it works. Telling the country the truth (about anything) doesn't get you re-elected and, as we all know, that's the most important thing in life. Obama can't pull off the "avuncular Grampa" bit…"Well, mommy, what time is it?" but he'll deliver a reasonable facsimile.
I lived through Reagan. You are, sadly, right Ken. Where we find ourselves now can't be traced to JFK or LBJ or even Nixon. Reagan started us down this path. It'll take a mighty force of nature to make America great (whatever that means) again.
I went to the store–they didn't have any Reagan Centennial decorations I got some boxes to make an Official Commemorative cardboard homeless shelter with his picture for my front yard.
Hope I'm not breaking any copyright rules.
I saw St. Ronnie's face in a pizza!
There seems to a collective amnesia regarding Ronnie's years in power, but not for anyone who lived through those times.
The Super Bowl's tribute to Ronnie will be followed by the Black-Eyed Peas' Salute to the Wonder that Is Afghanistan.
Black Eye Peas' are made up of three minorities and a woman– can't come up with a group that better represents the Reagan era unless one of them was gay and another had AIDS
That last video reminds me what an incompetent douchebag we had at the helm during the 80's. Thank god the Russians were more incompetent and corrupt.
Although, in a strange way, he was a comforting Douchebag. From the late sixties to the late eighties he had an influence.
He certainly did the "American, Fuck Yeah!" thing down to T. You know, that talent of making America feel good about itself while it is doing terrible, horrible things at home and abroad.
From the late sixties to the late eighties he had an influence.
So did fucking Ebola.
FTW
OT but nonetheless interesting: I'm posting this link in a couple of threads for those of you with Facebook and too much time on your hands. A distant acquaintance is waging guerilla war to educate these morans. Stop by and give him a hand.
Urk–the Facebook dilemma: to add a comment to that idiocy, I would have to "like" it.
As Dana Carvey's GHW Bush said, Naa Guhh doooit.
"From the late sixties to the late eighties he had an influence. "
…and so did AIDS.
I'm old enough to remember the very first cases, and reading the obituaries of hundreds of fine young men cut down by this horrible, wasting disease – treated like lepers with fear and misunderstanding bred by St. Ronnie's willful silence. Is THAT what you call a comforting influence? St. Ronnie – comforter in chief to the legions of AIDS patients suffering alone??
They still do…
aids did not die
HIV/AIDS was recognized in 1981, unless you're one of these polio-vaccine conspiracy loons, w/ maybe 30 million dead since then, mostly as a result of unprotected sex which is very preventable last time I checked. More than that many die of malnutrition EVERY year while every year Americans get fatter, how's that for a comforting influence? Enough of the 'horrible, wasting disease surrounded by fear and misunderstanding' bullshit, use a fucking condom and if you can't do that then just die, remember Oxfam in your will. Call it triage for a dying planet…
Why is Obama wanting to be Reaganesque, Hmmm…
Gibbs hints at 'Reaganesque' speech :
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19232.h...
Jesus-FUCK, is there an echo in here?
Na, it all in your head.
ON progressives:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/id5/peck22008.htm
BTW, you mis-spelled "Goatse."
I had to go look up this word, some here felt I was attempting to spell. According to Wiki it is a website about "goat sex". You even knowing of this site says pretty much all we need to know. Maybe you misspelled "GunToting" and it should be "GoatStroking" That falls under you large ideological tent.
Factoid: Bestiality is illegal in all non progressive states.
Progressive website http://my.firedoglake.com/teddysanfran/2010/12/15...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I38yvPKLaeQ&an...
You'll love this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0LP3hGBYYE&fe...
http://movementyouneed.com/2007/07/04/americas-bi...
It'll take us another 100 years to undo the damage he did, the senile old fuckface.
Obama, yea, it may take longer than that. It will take us that long to pay of the progressive debt. It would be painful either way, the destruction of the country by running it into obscurity or stopping the progressive agenda and having to pay for it.
Fuck him. Dana Carvey tried to make funnies last night that relied on a knowledge of history n stuff. Huge fail for him but a big triumph for the Ignorance Movement that Ronnie and his goobers brought us.
That b/w photo looks like a group ad for Depends and Aricept. Throw in a bathtub and you'd have the big three covered.
The Reagan "administration," along with the failed presidenies of Nixon, Bush I and Bush II, were four of the absolute worst–actually, the four worst–presidential "administrations" in the history of the United States. They were all corrupt, criminal, unethical, psycho, loony, moronic, idiotic, ridiculous, asinine, backwards, wayward, religiously crazy, crazy in general, psychotic, offensive, unprofessional, and full of uneducated, inexperienced thugs and criminals who put this country backwards 100 years, every time. The four presidencies have no legacy, there is no myth, they are not deserving of praise, and they all need to noted for what they were, overall, and at all levels: failures.
Both products of suburban Chicago, like John Belushi!
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