Ronald Reagan

[JoshK]

I, for one, am a huge GPS geek. For some reason I just think it's the coolest thing.

 

We can also thank the U.S. military for those great aerial photos we can get. The commercial sattilites that are now up there are as a result of the military developing that technology.

[graupel]

I, for one, am a huge GPS geek. For some reason I just think it's the coolest thing.

 

We can also thank the U.S. military for those great aerial photos we can get. The commercial sattilites that are now up there are as a result of the military developing that technology.

 

Just remember that it was Reagan that eliminated the U. S. Metric Board and cancelled its funding which likely prevented mainstream America ever going metric.

[snoboy]

[JoshK]

I, for one, am a huge GPS geek. For some reason I just think it's the coolest thing.

 

We can also thank the U.S. military for those great aerial photos we can get. The commercial sattilites that are now up there are as a result of the military developing that technology.

 

Just remember that it was Reagan that prevented the US from going metric.

 

Ouch...now that sucks.

[AlpineK]

I, for one, am a huge GPS geek. For some reason I just think it's the coolest thing.

 

We can also thank the U.S. military for those great aerial photos we can get. The commercial sattilites that are now up there are as a result of the military developing that technology.

 

Just remember that it was Reagan that eliminated the U. S. Metric Board and cancelled its funding which likely prevented mainstream America ever going metric.

 

Well that's one thing to praise Reagan for.

[cj001f]

Well that's one thing to praise Reagan for.

Loading American businesses with a competitive disadvantage on the world market?

[AlpineK]

Fuck the metric system.

[cj001f]

Fuck the metric system.

Sounds like someone never learned to multiply!

[graupel]

Loading American businesses with a competitive disadvantage on the world market?

 

Proponents of going metric claim it is just the opposite. Sticking your head in the sand while everyone else bathes in sunlight just delays the inevitable, and makes it more difficult to compete in a world economy with those that already converted.

 

http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/misc/usmetric/metric.htm

[Dru]

Metric system was invented by the FRENCH!!!

[badvoodoo]

Metric system was invented by the FRENCH!!!

 

Shouldn't it then be known in the US as the freedom system?

[cj001f]

Proponents of going metric claim it is just the opposite. Sticking your head in the sand while everyone else bathes in sunlight just delays the inevitable, and makes it more difficult to compete in a world economy with those that already converted.

I guess I was unclear. The competitive disadvantage is having to support 2 measurement systems: metric, what you need if you want to sell any product outside of the US, and English, which only Americans care about.

[markinore]

The lasting legacy of Reagan was that he made selfishness socially acceptable. Prior to Reagan, even conservative Republicans were temperate in reducing rich people's taxes, support for public education, and assistance for the least fortunate in our society. Nixon, for example, came up with the idea of the negative income tax to replace welfare, an idea that in retrospect seems remarkably progressive. Reagan, because of his genial nature and personal warmth, helped to achieve a cultural transformation. This is now evident in reduced government regulation of corporations (see Enron), shifting the tax burden to the middle class, deterioration of schools, and the proliferation of "privatized" services such as gated neighborhoods, private schools, private security services,and selling off of public hospitals.

 

I had forgotten, however, just how intellectually limited Reagan was until I read the following which appeared on Slate by Christopher Hitchens: http://slate.msn.com/id/2101842/

 

Not long ago, I was invited to be the specter at the feast during "Ronald Reagan Appreciation Week" at Wabash College in Indiana. One of my opponents was Dinesh D'Souza: He wasn't the only one who maintained that Reagan had been historically vindicated by the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Some of us on the left had also been very glad indeed to see the end of the Russian empire and the Cold War. But nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

 

Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature.) Ronald Reagan said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched. Ronald Reagan said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R. Ronald Reagan professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you." Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

 

There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war. Reagan allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling." Reagan sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck. Reagan then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too. Reagan then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.)

 

One could go on. I only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard. His reply was that maybe his staff had, and maybe they hadn't, but what about the leak of the Pentagon Papers? Thus, a secret theft of presidential documents was equated with the public disclosure of needful information. This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.

 

The fox, as has been pointed out by more than one philosopher, knows many small things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn't like him all that much. He met his second wife—the one that you remember—because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see. Year in and year out in Washington, I could not believe that such a man had even been a poor governor of California in a bad year, let alone that such a smart country would put up with such an obvious phony and loon.

[Dru]

On the environment, Reagan was the one who stated that trees caused pollution.

[Dave_Schuldt]

So i listened to NPR for 2 hours on Sunday. All Ronnie all the time all good. Why ass kiss the dead? They are DEAD! No mention of minning harbors in Nicaragua, Contras, support for dictators and the Iran Contra scandal.

[ken4ord]

Dead at 93.

 

RIP

 

Psst who cares, the guy was actor, big whoopie. I won't even begin to pretend that he was a president.

[ken4ord]

Fuck the metric system.

Sounds like someone never learned to multiply!

 

No to me it sounds like someone likes doing math, hell with the metric system being base 10 conversions in the metric system are simple and you barely have to have any math skills, just need to know how to move a decimal point.

[johndavidjr]

Average household cash income, 1979-1997, as calculated by the Congressional Budget Office.

(in thousands of after tax, 1997 dollars)

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Income Category 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Lowest Quintile 9.3 8.7 8 8.5 8.8 9.1 8.6 8.2 8.6 8.7

Middle Quintile 31.7 30.3 29.9 31.2 32 32.6 31.7 31.1 31.8 33.2

Top 1 Percent 256.4 278.4 364 444.2 421.5 506.8 438.2 433.7 447 644.3

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Source: Effective Federal Tax Rates, 1979-98, Congressional Budget Office, Washington, October 2001, Table 1.2c, p.134

[Dru]

But a former foe had few kind words on Reagan's passing.

 

"The death of any person is lamentable, but it is more lamentable when this person exercised such great power as the U.S. president and committed crimes, not just in Nicaragua but elsewhere in the world," said Daniel Ortega, the former president of Nicaragua whose Sandinista government was battled by Washington-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s.

[markinore]

I was just reminded of a joke from the Clinton era referring to Reagan: "Remember the good old days, when sleeping with the president meant attending a cabinet meeting?"

[Jim]

So i listened to NPR for 2 hours on Sunday. All Ronnie all the time all good. Why ass kiss the dead? They are DEAD! No mention of minning harbors in Nicaragua, Contras, support for dictators and the Iran Contra scandal.

 

A prime example of the lack of any critical analysis by major media in this country. You couldn't discern between Fox news and NPR on this subject. Also no mention that the Reganites were the admistration with the most convicted felons and the most ethics violations of any administration.

 

The guy was a simpleton. Apparently that's what folks want to hear. No gray areas, no complex issues. Sounds currently famaliar eh?

[scott_harpell]

So i listened to NPR for 2 hours on Sunday. All Ronnie all the time all good. Why ass kiss the dead? They are DEAD! No mention of minning harbors in Nicaragua, Contras, support for dictators and the Iran Contra scandal.

 

A prime example of the lack of any critical analysis by major media in this country. You couldn't discern between Fox news and NPR on this subject. Also no mention that the Reganites were the admistration with the most convicted felons and the most ethics violations of any administration.

 

The guy was a simpleton. Apparently that's what folks want to hear. No gray areas, no complex issues. Sounds currently famaliar eh?

 

Its called class. If you don't have something good to say about a person as a eulogy, don't say anything at all. As another poster stated, you are not saying things for the deceased, but rather for those who are greiving him.

[MervGriffin]

 

That little Slate article about Reagan by Christopher Hitchens and posted above was perhaps the most ignorant, mean-spirited piece of crap I've read in recent memory.

 

Just a sample for those tempted to read the whole thing:

 

" He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray.He had no friends, only cronies. His children didn't like him all that much. He met his second wife—the one that you remember—because she needed to get off a Hollywood blacklist and he was the man to see. Year in and year out in Washington, I could not believe that such a man had even been a poor governor of California in a bad year, let alone that such a smart country would put up with such an obvious phony and loon."

 

And even his dog hated him....Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah

 

Pure, unadulterated

 

Hitchins should be ashamed of himself.

The question is, what self-respecting periodical with any sort of credible standards would publish such manure?

[Jim]

While I agree to a point - that Slate article above is crass - news agencies are suppose to deal with facts, not image building. Certainly a reporter at a funeral should not stray far from the respectful nature of the event, but as a news organization supposedly providing a summary of the historical administration they should be comprehensive and not selective.

[mattp]

Sorry to disagree with you on the matter of respect there, Scott, but I think it is NOT inappropriate to reflect on what the man meant to us, and it IS wrongheaded to suggest that nobody should say anything but "nice" things about Ronald Reagon right now.

 

I couldn't believe it when I heard over and over again yesterday how he had defeated the USSR and ended the cold war. It is true that he was in office when they finally collapsed, but the collapse of the Soviet Union was the result of 40 years of inefficiency and the expenses and strain associated with the arms race and the like. Even though some take the position that Reagan's arms programs were the straw that broke the camel's back, it is entirely misleading to say that he is responsible for defeating the Soviet Union and even the effect of this tiny straw is a subject of debate.

 

That kind of hyperbole, even if offered in a eulogy, is bunk. Especially when it is being used to justify ongoing American policy.