Paul Slansky remembering Reagan

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Okay, the idea if two Libyan jets were dumb enough to pick a fight with the US Navy and get shot out of the sky, I don't mind the President not losing any sleep over it. We shouldn't have world apology tours like Obama does just cause we happen to be the United States.



Unnamed aide, and that is a valid source? Reminds me of the NY Times hitpiece on John McCain that they ended up getting sued by the woman they claimed had an affair with McCain. The woman won the lawsuit btw.



Did that actually get implimented? I'm sure they have proposed a lot of things that never get implimented.



Sounds one of those moments when someone has a verbal fopa.



And he could have been telling the truth.



That was deflecting a question that could compromise national security.




What does this have to do with Reagan doing anything wrong?



Okay what policies were they complaining about?



Uh huh, and what was in said spending bill?



Okay? The point is what exactly?

Actually she didn't. She settled with the Times, with no payment of damages. Both sides acknowledged that the Times never said that she had an affair with McCain, and never intended to conclude that she had.

And, yes, unnamed aides are valid sources. (An unnamed source is a source known to the journalist, but not attributed to that source. This is different from an anonymous source.) Perhaps you have heard of Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat?



Is the development of ridiculous policy a good use of public money, provided that the ridiculous policy never gets implemented?



That's faux pas. (But other than your poor command of borrowed expressions in the English language, I am prepared to agree with you on this one.)



Ketchup AND (Hamburgers OR FrenchFries) = Vegetable?

Now, I grant you that I'm only a physician, not a dietician. And, in fairness, neither was Reagan. However, there is no excuse for a politician's briefing book to contain "truths" such as these; particularly because, at the end of the day, it is the politician delivering the message who is ultimately responsible for its content, not the staffers who prepared the briefing book.



Then the correct answer would have been, "I am not going to answer a question that could compromise national security." The correct answer is not to faff around, pass the question on, and then repeat the other person's answer.



Fair question.

There is a doctrine that elected members of the executive branch is accountable for the conduct of officials subordinate to them. In Parliamentary systems it is known as Ministerial Responsibility.

Had Allen merely "received" rather than "accepted" the emolument, one would expect him to have complied with the government's gift policy, and for the President to have been able to point to that compliance. Instead, the responsible elected official backs his appointee's integrity, and then looks a fool when that integrity cannot be demonstrated.

At best, Allen was incompetent for not having arranged for the cheque's return or destruction. And that is a reflection on the man who hired him.



I don't think it matters in the slightest what policies "they" were complaining about. Rather, it is the implication in DeVos' statement that complaints about economic policy from people with no money are not worth considering.

That being said, DeVos was not, so far as I am aware, a member of the Reagan administration, so it's a distraction from the question of whether or not Reagan was a competent President.



Can you not see the forest for the trees? The issue in question is whether Reagan could hold an intelligent conversation about the budget. One would expect that to be an essential characteristic in a Head of Government.



Again, the calibre of the appointee reflects upon the appointer.

The real problem here is that we are engaged in an exercise of anecdotes. Your better argument against skafather84 is not nitpicking the details, but rather an assessment of the overall impact of the Reagan presidency, and Reagan's own responsibility for that impact.

That would be a discussion worth having.

His effect was out of control inflation, a reduction in quality of life for the middle and lower classes, an out of control drug problem in the poorest areas, a drastic reduction in taxes (from 70 to 36%) for the top earners by cutting programs and protections for the rest of the country. His deregulatory efforts helped pave the way for the market bubbles and crashes we've endured through for the last 10 or so years.

Reagan's real problem was Iran Contra. He really took a hit on that one. I remember he seemed kind of beaten and accounts have suggested that was true. Also, he initiated the horrible deficit spending that his successors have emulated.

And his poll numbers werent that great. A little below average for a modern president. Behind all since Eisenhower except Carter and Bush 43. At one point, with 10%+ unemployment, he hit 35%.

10/12/82 White House spokesman Larry Speakes to the press: “You don’t tell us how to stage the news, and we don’t tell you how to report it.”

10/19/82 During a White House meeting with Arab leaders, President Reagan turns to the Lebanese foreign minister. “You know,” he says, “your nose looks just like Danny Thomas’s.”

11/11/82 President Reagan explains that his proposed five-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax would not be a tax at all. “It would be,” he explains, “a user fee.”

11/25/82 Larry Speakes chooses Thanksgiving as the ideal moment to announce that the White House is considering a proposal (conceived by Ed Meese) to tax unemployment benefits. This, says Speakes, would “make unemployment less attractive.”

11/26/82 Ed Meese denies that taxing unemployment benefits has been seriously considered, though he can’t help adding, “We do know that generally when unemployment benefits end, most people find jobs very quickly.”

12/4/82 President Reagan returns home from his five-day trip to Latin America. “Well, I learned a lot,” he tells reporters. “You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries.” An aide is soon sent out to explain that the President certainly didn’t mean to imply that he was surprised by this.

12/9/82 Discussing his feelings of confinement with a reporter for People magazine, President Reagan says, “Sometimes I look out there at Pennsylvania Avenue and see people bustling along, and it suddenly dawns on me that probably never again can I just say, ‘Hey, I’m going down to the drugstore to look at the magazines.’”

12/15/82 Literary agent Bill Adler announces that The Deaver Diet, recounting the White House aide’s 35‑pound weight loss, will be published in early 1984. Adler says the book will consist of 75% diet, 20% exercise and 5% “inspiration.”

12/16/82 Spontaneously conveying one of his regrets to a Washington Post reporter, President Reagan says, “I sometimes look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to be able to just walk down the street to the corner drugstore and look at the magazines. I can’t do that anymore.”

12/18/82 Sharing a sudden thought with a radio interviewer, President Reagan says, “I sometimes look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to be able to just walk down the street to the corner drugstore and look at the magazines. I can’t do that anymore.”

Where is the rest of it, because it sounds like there is more which completely changes the context.



And that is an insult how?

A devout Roman Catholic, Thomas was awarded a papal knighthood by Pope Paul VI. He was named a Knight Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in recognition of his services to both the church and the community. President Ronald Reagan presented Thomas with a Congressional Gold Medal honoring him for his work with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. According to tradition, he was the first non-Jewish member of the Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Thomas



I think that was more of an attempt to be cute than anything else.



Okay, I fail to see how this is bad except given this current President businesses are being discouraged from hiring due to Obama's anti-business agenda.



Uh, President Reagan was known for giving remarks that he wasn't serious about.



Okay and this is an issue why?



He was trying to be funny...



Okay and what is the point of this?

So far this looks like a much ado about nothing.

2/27/82 The Congressional Budget Office finds that taxpayers earning under $10,000 lost an average $240 from last year’s tax cuts, while those earning over $80,000 gained an average of $15,130.

3/1/82 Sen. Bob Packwood (R‑OR) reveals that President Reagan frequently offers up transparently fictional anecdotes as if they were real. “We’ve got a $120 billion deficit coming,” says Packwood, “and the President says, ‘You know, a young man, went into a grocery store and he had an orange in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other, and he paid for the orange with food stamps and he took the change and paid for the vodka. That’s what’s wrong.’ And we just shake our heads.”

3/1/82 In a speech to the Civil Defense Association, Ed Meese describes nuclear war as “something that may not be desirable.”

3/24/82 Agriculture official Mary C. Jarratt tells Congress her department has been unable to document President Reagan’s horror stories of food stamp abuse, pointing out that the change from a food stamp purchase is limited to 99 cents. “It’s not possible to buy a bottle of vodka with 99 cents,” she says. Deputy White House press secretary Peter Roussel says Reagan wouldn’t tell these stories “unless he thought they were accurate.”

4/15/82 Citing a favorite example of British jurisprudence, President Reagan says, “England was always very proud of the fact that the English police did not have to carry guns ... In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn’t use it, he was not tried for burglary or theft or whatever he was doing. He was tried for first‑degree murder and hung if he was found guilty.” White House spokesman Larry Speakes, on being informed that this fable is totally untrue, responds, “Well, it’s a good story, though. It made the point, didn’t it?”

4/30/82 President Reagan describes the Falkland Islands war as a “dispute over the sovereignty of that little ice‑cold bunch of land down there.”

5/10/82 Taking questions from students at a Chicago high school, President Reagan explains why his revised tax exemption policy could not possibly have been intended to benefit segregated schools. “I didn’t know there were any,” he says. “Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.”

5/21/82 Discussing Soviet weaponry at a National Security Council meeting, President Reagan asks CIA deputy director Bobby Inman, “Isn’t the SS‑19 their biggest missile?” No, Inman replies, “that’s the SS‑18.” “So,” says the President, “they’ve even switched the numbers on their missiles in order to confuse us!” Inman explains that the numbers are assigned by US intelligence.

6/17/82 Interior Secretary James Watt – one of whose semantic rules is, “I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It’s liberals and Americans” – warns the Israeli ambassador that if “liberals of the Jewish community” oppose his plans for off‑shore drilling, “they will weaken our ability to be a good friend of Israel.”

6/20/82 Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger explains the Pentagon’s position on a “protracted” nuclear war: “We don’t believe a nuclear war can be won,” but “we are planning to prevail if we are attacked.” The difference between winning and prevailing is not explored.

Reagan80s topic

I happened to live through those years, and in Canada our PrIme Minister was Brian Mulroney. Both of these guys of Irish descent danced to the same tune for the entire decade. Lyin' Brian is now an old man, very rich, and totally unapologetic for all the economic/political blunders attributed to his governance.

His chin grows on and on.

Last edited by sartresue on 11 Feb 2011, 4:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mulroney can bite my bag and so can his limp wrist son

1/10/83 Complaining about loose-lipped members of his Administration talking to the press, President Reagan declares, “I’ve had it up to my keister with these leaks.” This causes The New York Times to explain that “keister” is a “slang term for rump.”

1/13/83 Responding to Michael Deaver’s literary agent’s announcement that The Deaver Diet – recounting the Reagan PR guru’s 35-pound weight loss – will be published in 1984, columnist William Safire writes, “The Reagan White House has pioneered the New Graft. Instead of selling influence, sell your White House celebrity.” In an editorial, The New York Times notes, “For a White House aide to publish a diet book while jobless totals rise and cheese lines lengthen is a sure setup for Johnny Carson.” The book is never published.

1/20/83 In an interview with Business Week, Interior Secretary James Watt – who has described environmentalists as “a left-wing cult dedicated to bringing down the type of government I believe in” – compares them to Nazis. “Look what happened to Germany in the 1930s,” he says. “The dignity of man was subordinated to the powers of Nazism ... Those are the forces that this can evolve into.” Observes Wilderness Society chairman Gaylord Nelson, “I think the secretary has gone bonkers.”

1/20/83 President Reagan tells reporters about “the ten commandments of Nikolai Lenin ... the guiding principles of Communism,” among them “that promises are like pie crust, made to be broken.” Soviet scholars claim that no such commandments exist, and point out that Lenin’s name was Vladimir.

1/25/83 Unimpressed by President Reagan’s understanding of the underclass, NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks says, “For the last thirty years he’s been in a dream world ... I think he actually believes that giving more to rich people will make them work harder, whereas the only way to make poor people work is to tax their unemployment benefits.”

2/15/83 The New York Times: REAGAN MISSTATEMENTS GETTING LESS ATTENTION

2/24/83 Three Canadian documentaries, including the Academy Award nominee If You Love This Planet, are classified as “political propaganda” by the Justice Department.

3/8/83 President Reagan tells a national convention of evangelicals that the Soviet Union is “the focus of evil in the modern world ... an evil empire.” Says historian Henry Steele Commager, “It was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I’ve read them all.”

3/22/83 Describing a memorable moment at a GOP leadership meeting, Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) says, “The President, in one of the rare times I have seen him really disgusted, threw his glasses down and said he’s had it up to his keister with the banking industry.” The New York Times again explains that “keister” is a “slang term for rump.”

3/23/83 In what will become known as his “Star Wars” speech, President Reagan proposes a space‑based defense system to laser-blast incoming missiles out of the sky, just like in the movies. Just like one in particular: the 1940 film Murder In the Air, whose hero, Secret Service Agent Brass Bancroft (played by Ronald Reagan), gets involved with “The Inertia Projector,” a death ray that can shoot down planes.

Reagan forced an end to the Cold War and freed Eastern Europe from Soviet Control. Now while radical leftists hate Reagan for it, the people of Eastern Europe actually built statues of the man.

Polish admirers of Ronald Reagan say they will erect a statue of the late US president in Warsaw to thank him for helping to end communist rule.
They say the 3.5-metre (10.5ft) stone and bronze statue will stand opposite the US embassy in the Polish capital.

"The statue is a way for his legacy to live on," said Janusz Dorosiewicz, a businessman behind the private project.

In 1989, Poland became the first nation in Eastern Europe to defeat communism. Reagan died in 2004 at the age of 93.
"This is an entirely private initiative undertaken by Poles in Poland, the United States and Canada," Mr Dorosiewicz said.

"Reagan was the person who defeated the communists and opened the way for freedom in Poland," he said.

The organisers estimate that the statue will cost about 140,000 euros (£94,000).

It will be unveiled on 4 July 2007 - US Independence Day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5366992.stm

In commemoration of what would have been Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, the Liberal Alliance (LA) now wants to name a street in the capital after the former US president, reports Ekstra Bladet newspaper.

“Reagan won the Cold War without firing a single shot,” said Lars Berg Dueholm, the party's political group leader at the City Council. ”That makes him one of the 20th century's greatest statesmen and it deserves to be honoured by us here in Copenhagen.”

Dueholm, who is also a member of the council's street naming committee, where the proposal will now be presented, pointed out that Denmark has a tradition for honouring the greatest foreign politicians by naming a street or a town square after them, for example Churchill Park.

He said that the Østerbro district would be a good place for the new street name, preferably near the America Plads (‘America Square’).
http://www.cphpost.dk/news/local/87-loc ... hagen.html

So really, I think the left wing smear campaign needs to stop.

skafather84, they are naming roads after him and building statues of him in Eastern Europe the countries he helped liberate. Shows how petty the far-left is to try to smear a man that helped liberate Eastern Europe from Communism.

4/14/83 President Reagan is asked if his administration is trying to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. “No,” he says, “because that would be violating the law.”

4/18/83 Seventeen Americans and 46 Lebanese are killed when a truck bomb plows into the US embassy in Beirut.

4/27/83 President Reagan asks Congress for $600 million for his Central American policies, pointing out – as if it had some relevance – that this “is less than one‑tenth of what Americans will spend this year on coin‑operated video games.”

5/4/83 President Reagan lauds the Nicaraguan contras as “freedom fighters” and observes that nuclear weapons “can’t help but have an effect on the population as a whole.”

5/18/83 During a speech to the White House News Photographers dinner, President Reagan sticks his thumbs in his ears and wiggles his fingers. Says the leader of the free world, “I’ve been waiting years to do this.”

5/28/83 Telling his aides that, rather than reading his briefing books, he spent the eve of the Williamsburg economic summit watching The Sound of Music, President Reagan says, “I put them aside and spent the evening with Julie Andrews.”

6/9/83 Addressing a forum in Minnesota, President Reagan is asked how the Federal Government plans to respond to a report on education that he has “approved ... in its entirety.” He is unable to provide anything more specific than that he is “going to have meetings,” and finally turns to Education Secretary T. H. Bell for help. “Could you fill in what I left out?” the President asks Bell. “I won’t be offended.”

6/10/83 Reacting to President Reagan’s claim that he has increased federal aid to education, House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-TX) says, “It embarrasses all of us as Americans to have to point out that the President of the United States is not telling the truth ... I want to believe that he doesn’t know any better. I want to believe that those who furnish him those spurious statistics are the culprits and that the President of the United States is innocently making these statements, not aware of their total untruth.”

6/16/83 Ariela Gross, a 17‑year‑old New Jersey student, meets with President Reagan to present him with a petition supporting a nuclear freeze. She reports that the President “expressed the belief that there must be something wrong with the freeze if the Soviets want it.”

6/29/83 President Reagan suggests that one cause of the decline in public education is the schools’ efforts to comply with court‑ordered desegregation.

That is such tripe. Obviously the fall of Communism had nothing to do with the different Solidarity movements that sprung up, or Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR, its all because of Reagan, the icon of the golden days of the 80s, when men were men, and the 1980 miracle hockey team won (also clearly because of Ronny) and Patrick Swayze won our hearts with films such as 'Road House' and the documentary 'Red Dawn'

6/29/83 President Reagan appears on a TV tribute to James Bond, where he speaks about the fictional secret agent as if he was a real human. “James Bond is a man of honor,” says the President, “a symbol of real value to the free world.” Says Tip O’Neill aide Chris Matthews, “This is the kind of thing we all thought Reagan would be doing if he had lost the ‘80 election.”

7/26/83 Reagan appointee Thomas Ellis acknowledges at a Senate hearing that he belongs to an all‑white country club, was a recent guest of the government of South Africa (where he has extensive holdings) and served as director of a group that financed research on the genetic inferiority of blacks. Still, he says, “I do not believe in my heart that I’m a racist.” He withdraws his name two days later.

8/2/83 Rep. Pat Schroeder (D‑CO) says that Reagan is “perfecting the Teflon‑coated presidency ... nothing sticks to him. He is responsible for nothing – civil rights, Central America, the Middle East, the economy, the environment. He is just the master of ceremonies at someone else’s dinner.”

8/22/83 Barbara Honegger resigns her job at the Justice Department after writing an Op‑Ed piece for The Washington Post in which she calls Reagan’s policies toward women “a sham.” Described by a department spokesman as a “low‑level munchkin,” she holds a news conference three days later to display a photograph of herself with President Reagan. “They called me a Munchkin,” she says. “This is me with the Wizard of Oz.”

9/1/83 A Soviet fighter mistakenly shoots down Korean Air Lines flight 007 after it strays into Soviet airspace, killing 269. George Shultz calls Tip O’Neill to tell him about the incident. “What does the President think about this?” asks O’Neill. “We’ll tell him when he wakes up,” says Shultz. Only after CBS shows President Reagan on horseback at his ranch as the crisis unfolds does he reluctantly return to Washington.

9/15/83 President Reagan wears his new hearing aid at a state dinner, prompting fashion‑conscious guest Merv Griffin to exclaim, “I think everybody’s running out to get them whether they need them or not.” Despite Griffin’s fatuous comment, there is in fact no surge in the purchase of unnecessary hearing aids.

9/21/83 Interior Secretary James Watt describes the makeup of his coal‑leasing commission to a group of lobbyists. “We have every kind of mix you can have,” he says. “I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” As a public furor erupts, a spokesman explains that Watt “was attempting to convey that this is a very broadly based commission.”

9/27/83 Polio victim Bob Brostrom arrives at the White House on crutches to present 120,000 pieces of mail supporting James Watt. If Watt loses his job for saying “cripple,” argues Brostrom, then hospitals for “crippled children” should change their names.

10/4/83 At a meeting with congressmen to discuss arms reduction, President Reagan – in office for almost three years – says he has only recently learned that most of the USSR’s nuclear arsenal is land‑based. This elementary information is essential to any rational thinking about disarmament.

10/9/83 Claiming that his “usefulness” to President Reagan “has come to an end,” James Watt resigns. “The press tried to paint my hat black,” he says of his troubled tenure, “but I had enough self‑image to know the hat was white.” He later assumes a crucifixion pose for photographers.