Posted on 06/07/2004 6:43:19 AM PDT by GreatOne
I never cared much for Ronald Reagan, the president. But I must tip my hat to Reagan, the myth.
It is Reagan the myth the nation now eulogizes - that political colossus who, his supporters claim, vanquished both the Soviet Union and the liberal welfare state with the certainty of his optimism and the jaunty cock of his head. . .
As for the other towering pillar of the Reagan myth - that he single-handedly slew the Soviet bear - there is little, if any, historical support. The Soviet empire was weak and its economy imploding. The scholarly consensus is that Reagan's defense buildup, far from bringing a robust giant to its knees, perhaps helped to nudge a terminal patient into death. . .
Reagan was said to have a clear-eyed view of America's place in the world, yet he entangled the United States in the Iran-contra scandal, with its dark deals and unsavory alliances. Their legacies haunt us to this day. . .
Reagan was not a great president. He was an American archetype and a fabulous political hero who brought his party out of the wilderness. There was not, and has not since, been anyone better at the inspirational photo-op, an essential ingredient of the modern presidency. And even I must admit that over these next few days of mourning, I'm looking forward to watching the re-runs.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
This may be true, but, if a liberal Democrat would have been President at that time you could bet your bottom dollar that no pressure whatsoever would have been applied to that teetering government . As a result the USSR would have most likely continued to be a threat, perhaps more so, as a wounded bear would more dangerous. It truly was Reagan who engineered the downfall of the "Evil Empire", like it or not libs.
In my opinion, her behavior was not that of a friend at all. It appears that by her actions she has ended your friendship, and sadly there are times in life where the choices of other hurt us through no fault of our own.
This evil skank is demonstrating several things:
Absence of any human decency in her character.
Total ignorance of the historical significance of Reagan and his accomplishments. Thus, obliviousness toward history in general. And, she's had at LEAST ten years to noodle out this matter: the fall of the USSR, etc.
Utter inability to distinguish a genuinely good person from an evil and phony, lying person (JFK).
Cluelessness about how she is coming off in this piece. Why expose this petty and dark side of her character? And putting it in something that will be archived forever?
She's about as dumb as the a$$hole who was bashing Mother Theresa after her demise.
Why not write a hatchet piece on Santa Claus on Christmas Eve?
SHEEEEEEEESH!!!_
Ooops - the HTML auto-detector is hyperactive - this one should be correct: cocco@newsday.com
You didn't ask for advice, and I am not here to tell you what to do.
However, if it were me, I probably would go out of my way to avoid a person like that for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that she has extraordinarily bad manners and quite obviously thinks only of herself (to the extent that you wish to call her mental processes thinking).
As to her blaming President Reagan for problems that are the consequences of her own poor judgment and bad choices, I am reminded of a website I stumbled on yesterday on which President Reagan was being blamed for lack of birth control in third world countries and the economic/social consequences of that lack. I found that to be amazing in its stupidity.
Here we have groups of people who are irresponsibly procreating far in excess of their ability to provide for the children they produce and this is somehow someone else's fault. More astonishingly, the primary someone at fault is a person who has not been President of the United States for over 15 years.
Since terrorism was already building since the 70's I can only imagine if we had to continue to fight Communism and terror at the same time or worse they all joined up together.
Let us not forget Jimmah Carter is one of the founding fathers of modern day terrorism thanks to his miserable presidential failures.....
When democrats call President Reagan "the great communicator", it's an insult, an attempt to belittle his greatness. Oh, they applaud his talent as a B movie actor, his ability to follow a script, and speak well. But make no mistake, their intended message is: "President Reagan was a performing monkey".
What's so funny to me is the irony. Those compliments rightfully belong to Bill Clinton!
Democrats know it was what President Reagan said, not how he said it, that drew Americans of all political persuasions, into the voting booth for Ronald Reagan. And it's what President Reagan said, and how his actions matched his words, that is drawing this spontaneous, and magnificent show of love and respect for him now.
John Kerry has folded his snake oil tent for this week of mourning...and it's not out of respect, it's the knowledge his message would be lost.
Bill Clinton, (true to form), made a statement that was more about him than about Ronald Reagan, but don't you just know Bill Clinton is mentally comparing what people will be talking about, upon the news of his death. And for certain, Clinton is irked that his pre-book promos seem so self-serving and so unimportant at this time.
Nancy Pelosi will pay for her mean, contemptable reaction to the news of President Reagan's death, refusing to lower the flag to half mast as long as she could.
Has Al Gore issued a statement?
The nasty C-Span callers who blame homelessness, Aids, and their own personal sob story on Ronald Reagan, are probably calling in from DNC call centers. But democrats up for re-election aren't spewing nasty venom...they know how it would be received. But lefty talking heads, narrators, anchors and reporters continue to sneak in sly zingers. I suppose if they didn't, their heads would explode, so great is their hatred of Ronald Reagan, who after all, made possible the presidency of George W. Bush.
Peggy Noonan was wrong. It didn't take a week for the left to start trashing RWR.
Actually, it's Marie. I think I've seen her on one of the talking head shows.
My "friend" in question is a big fan of the author of this piece of excrement also LOL ( she gets this paper daily so has been brainwashed for a very long long time)
My decision is pretty much made up to end the friendship. Nothing more good can come of it ( not that anything has in a while) as she further sinks into her miserable hell. I know she is under a lot of personal stress and have forgiven her a lot of that but its finally time.
I am not making this choice lightly either and it hurts to some extent but she is becoming a bad influence not only on her own family but her children and my children really should not be around her kids either as I try to raise them as conservative with morals who know right from wrong, good vs. evil.
Bump for the mythical Berlin wall falling down.
Leftwingnuts are everywhere today. Pick a bushel, make a pie.
Take a look at some of the crap here
Please Liberals. . .please. . pretty please with sugar on top. . I mean please don't resist. Slime Ronald Reagan. Heap it on with vigor. In short, be yourselves.
(Why you may ask my fellow Freepers do I want this? Simple, the Left has never ever come to grips with Reagan's popularity and what he means to this country. Sliming this man will be like the Left playing Russian Roulette with all six full.)
Liberals just don't get it.
Both preventable by the individual. It is not the president's job to give you a house and monitor your sex life and drug use.
Makes me feel all warm inside.
No, they do not. They are NOT just affable political opponents with a different point of view. For the most part I DO NOT befriend people with liberal politics.
That's nothing. Go to www.aintitcoolnews.com, and scroll to the bottom for a link to a Reagan talkbalk. The bile is astounding.
[i]As for the other towering pillar of the Reagan myth - that he single-handedly slew the Soviet bear - there is little, if any, historical support. The Soviet empire was weak and its economy imploding. The scholarly consensus is that Reagan's defense buildup, far from bringing a robust giant to its knees, perhaps helped to nudge a terminal patient into death. . . [/i]
oh, REALLY? The only people (with any sense) who don't give Reagan credit for killing the USSR are the ones who do not WANT Reagan to get credit for killing the USSR. IMO, Reagan played the best hand of Poker in the history of the game.
I've never heard it summed up better than here: (http://www.institutenorth.org/R.W_Robinson.htm .... but the link may be dead, sorry)
"Earlier I referenced some unhappy discoveries I made during my East-West banking days with Chase. I believe a brief review of the economic and financial dimensions of President Reagan’s strategy to hasten the demise of the Soviet empire provides a good illustration of the prominent -- and even decisive -- role this economic component of the President’s strategy played in this historic drama. For example, most of those seeking to understand the collapse of Soviet communism -- particularly revisionists -- don’t adequately appreciate the fact that the total annual hard currency income of the USSR in the early 1980’s of roughly $32 billion was the equivalent of only about one-third of the annual revenues of one American company like General Motors or Exxon.
An estimated 80% of total Soviet hard currency income was derived from just four export items - oil, gas, arms and gold. Not surprisingly, Moscow was spending more hard currency than it was taking in to support an empire that stretched from Havana to Hanoi. This gap, or cash shortage, was financed largely by borrowing from Western governments and commercial banks. In fact, the amount of Moscow’s annual borrowings in the West was roughly equivalent to the total cost of all of the Soviet Union’s foreign commitments. In other words, the West in the 1980’s was unwittingly providing crucial financial life support to the Soviet regime on the order of 100% of the cost of its external empire. President Reagan believed that this remarkable set of facts offered the U.S. a non-military means of rolling back Soviet global power and repression while creating a financial train wreck within the country from which Moscow would probably not recover. As history has shown, it didn’t.
When Soviet forces began to mass on the Polish border in 1981 and later forced the imposition of martial law in that country, President Reagan responded with a number of policy measures, including implementation of what we called the "strategic trade triad." Specifically, this meant sharply limiting Moscow’s access to:
1) Western Europe’s natural gas markets; 2)officially subsidized lending arrangements; and 3)sophisticated, militarily-relevant U.S. and Western technologies.
The so-called Siberian gas pipeline dispute within the Atlantic alliance in 1982 occurred in this context and tested America’s resolve that the second 3,600-mile strand of this huge two-strand pipeline project not be built. The already-committed first strand would also be delayed by embargoing key U.S. oil and gas equipment and technology which was unavailable elsewhere. The cost to Moscow of losing the second strand of the Siberian gas pipeline was to be roughly $10-15 billion annually -- a debilitating sum -- not to mention the costs of a two year delay in bringing the first strand on-line. (This effort was complimented by the Reagan Administration’s intervention with the Saudi’s urging them to increase oil production and thus lower prices – representing another blow to Soviet hard currency earnings.) These three major economic initiatives to curtail Western life-support to the USSR were combined with a massive U.S. military build-up, the launch of the Strategic Defense Initiative and head-on U.S. engagement against Soviet aggression in the Third World to accelerate, if not cause, the end of the so-called "Evil Empire." It is no coincidence that the Kremlin defaulted on some $90 billion in Western debt a mere two days before the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991." - Roger W. Robinson, Jr.(former Senior Director of International Economic Affairs at the National Security Council )
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My favorite part of the story, though, was SDI and the announcement of the Great "Brilliant Pebbles" Research Breakthrough. (The Administration announced that we had made a big SDI research breakthrough and released a video of "something" ... you couldn't tell what was going on but the audio sounded like a gymnasium of Geeks watching something spectacular and going absolutely nuts over it.
It was a lie. (God, I love it when we are sneaky.)
LOL ... "Not Chess, Spock ...... Poker!"
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Sorry about spamming the forum, but my link to Robinson's comments appeared dead.
Mush the Poker Fan
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