Ronald Reagan

There were indeed problems with mental health facilities in the past, but the solution isn't to abandon them altogether and replace them with prisons.

What terrorist do I support?

Star Wars works? I heard it works occasionally under controlled conditions. $44 Billion later and it still encourages a nuclear arms race, violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Ronald%20Reagan.jpg

...He was a bad actor, an informer for McCarthy, and a hired front man for a gang of Texas oilmen, fundamentalist dingbats, and right-wing psychotics out of Dr. Strangelove. He put a genial face on chauvanism, callousness, and greed, and made people feel good about being bigots again. He likened Central American death squads to our founding fathers and called the Taliban “freedom fighters.” His legacy includes the dismantling of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the final dirty win of Management over Labor, the outsourcing of America’s manufacturing base, the embezzlement of almost all the country's wealth by 1% of its citizens, the scapegoating of the poor and black, the War on Drugs, the eviction of schizophrenics into the streets, AIDS, acid rain, Iran-Contra, and, let’s not forget, the corpses of two hundred forty United States Marines. He moved the center of political discourse in this country to somewhere in between Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet. He believed in astrology and Armageddon and didn't know the difference between history and movies; his stories were lies and his jokes were scripted. He was the triumph of image over truth, paving the way for even more vapid spokesmodels like George W. Bush. He was, as everyone agrees, exactly what he appeared to be—nothing. He made me ashamed to be an American. If there was any justice in this world his Presidential Library would contain nothing but boys' adventure books and bad cowboy movies, and the only things named after him would be shopping malls and Potter's Fields. Let the earth where he is buried be seeded with salt.

-Tim Kreider
 
madanthonywayne said:
Reagan kicked ass. Carter had the country in the doldrums. The US military was a joke. The economy was a shambles. He gave away the Panama canal.

Reagan came in and restored America's confidence. Beefed up the military, and bankrupted the USSR with an arms race they could no longer keep up with.

My favorite quote from Reagan was a sound check he did before a speech. He said:
"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to inform you that we have recently passed legistlation outlawing the Soviet Union; we begin bombing in five minutes."

I'll bet that scared the shit out of old Gorby.
Carter was an abysmal leader. He aided the Somoza junta as they fled Nicaragua, he was allied with the brutal Shah of Iran, he funded rightist death squads in the Philippines and was responsible for strengthening the blockade against Cuba. He was also a buddy of the gusano mafia in south Florida. But blaming Carter for the bad economy and the status of the military is foolish. Republicans are great at pointing fingers at the previous administrations when their own are in bad shape so Nixon & Ford are responsible for the weak 70's. Reagan bankrupted the economy, presided over the highest unemployment rate in decades, ruled during the period we had the highest fuel costs ever, inflation was through the roof and he had zilch to do with the USSR breaking up. That was from the inside of their corrupted Stalinist govt. Reagan funded the Afghan mujajadeen (Taliban) and backed Saddam Hussein in it's war on Iran. Reagan broke the laws of the nation to fund his terrorists in Latin America and rewarded Khomeini in Iran Contra. The world is a far better place with him rotting in the ground. I LOVED watching that old Hollywood fraud stumble and drool in his last years. A fitting end to a truly corrupted immoral man.
 
spidergoat said:
There were indeed problems with mental health facilities in the past, but the solution isn't to abandon them altogether and replace them with prisons.

What terrorist do I support?

Star Wars works? I heard it works occasionally under controlled conditions. $44 Billion later and it still encourages a nuclear arms race, violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Ronald%20Reagan.jpg

...He was a bad actor, an informer for McCarthy, and a hired front man for a gang of Texas oilmen, fundamentalist dingbats, and right-wing psychotics out of Dr. Strangelove. He put a genial face on chauvanism, callousness, and greed, and made people feel good about being bigots again. He likened Central American death squads to our founding fathers and called the Taliban “freedom fighters.” His legacy includes the dismantling of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the final dirty win of Management over Labor, the outsourcing of America’s manufacturing base, the embezzlement of almost all the country's wealth by 1% of its citizens, the scapegoating of the poor and black, the War on Drugs, the eviction of schizophrenics into the streets, AIDS, acid rain, Iran-Contra, and, let’s not forget, the corpses of two hundred forty United States Marines. He moved the center of political discourse in this country to somewhere in between Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet. He believed in astrology and Armageddon and didn't know the difference between history and movies; his stories were lies and his jokes were scripted. He was the triumph of image over truth, paving the way for even more vapid spokesmodels like George W. Bush. He was, as everyone agrees, exactly what he appeared to be—nothing. He made me ashamed to be an American. If there was any justice in this world his Presidential Library would contain nothing but boys' adventure books and bad cowboy movies, and the only things named after him would be shopping malls and Potter's Fields. Let the earth where he is buried be seeded with salt.

-Tim Kreider
I LOVE this cartoon!!!! :D
 
spidergoat said:
Star Wars works? I heard it works occasionally under controlled conditions. $44 Billion later and it still encourages a nuclear arms race, violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The first time some rogue state launches a nuke our way and we shoot it down, that 44 Billion will seem like a pittance.
 
madanthonywayne said:
The first time some rogue state launches a nuke our way and we shoot it down, that 44 Billion will seem like a pittance.
Perhaps, but I'll bet if the USA does experience a nuclear blast it won't be coming from any country, making multi billion dollar "Star Wars" defense weapons useless. By the time a project like that was completed it would be redundant. Nope, if the US does get hit it'll be from a nuke delivered by land or sea. A small dirty bomb in the Houston shipping channel, a nuke shipped in the Port of NY or Seattle, run across the border in vans or a truck from Mexico. That's how the modern world of war works. It won't be North Korea or China or Iran, it'll be a multi-national group of terrorists. Star Wars is a Cold War defense mechanism. Memo: The Cold War and it's weapons are obsolete.
 
Genji said:
Memo: The Cold War and it's weapons are obsolete.

That's funny, because the biggest Cold War weapon was espionage. And the 9/11 commission's major finding was that we lacked the human resources to power our intelligence system. Basically, that the downsizing that occurred after winning the Cold War, is what led to the possibility for a 9/11 attack.

They have told us over and over that we need the Cold War weapons to be honed and readied, and now you are telling us that those weapons are obsolete?

Or did you just mean to say that Nukes are obsolete? And that the Cold War was meaningless now that the threat is over, and the team you were rooting for lost?
 
swivel said:
That's funny, because the biggest Cold War weapon was espionage. And the 9/11 commission's major finding was that we lacked the human resources to power our intelligence system. Basically, that the downsizing that occurred after winning the Cold War, is what led to the possibility for a 9/11 attack.

They have told us over and over that we need the Cold War weapons to be honed and readied, and now you are telling us that those weapons are obsolete?

Or did you just mean to say that Nukes are obsolete? And that the Cold War was meaningless now that the threat is over, and the team you were rooting for lost?
There haven't been any teams I've rooted for as of yet. I was making the point that the threats of the 80's are not the same threats we have now. It was a different world. A more balanced & safe world for Americans and the Soviets, but a different world nonetheless. I just said the threats facing the US today are not nations or axis' of evil but of clandestine groups that offer no particular target to retaliate toward. The breakup of the Stalinist USSR actually made the whole world alot more unstable. The rise of 7 new Islamic republics, nukes that once were in Soviet hands are now scattered among these countries, along with the people that designed them. Star Wars, if completed, would be somewhat of a deterrent in the event a country nuked us from afar. You missed my whole point: Our threats come from inside, not outside. The delivery systems for a nuke that Star Wars could stop are very limited. The idea of a bomb being smuggled in through shipping crates or in pieces and assembled here and deployed is what we should be building defenses for. Star Wars is a relic.
 
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