Pat Oliphant for February 09, 2011

I myth Reagan a lot.

the first American President to get on his KNEES before a foreign power… as a knighted member of the british empire. He did great work for the queen, not so good for the Republics of the world.

He was as conservatives would say ; a TORY. with a seat for “lady” Reagan in the land-lords house. Oddly, he destroyed the Republican Party, as NO one is there that does NOT get approval from LORD;’sir” rubert @ foxnoose. There’s No conservatives, no true Republicans in the GOP, anymore. Just the ongoing desire to be “royal” like reagan, or Sir bush, sir kissenger et al. and work for the royal oil companies- see IRAQ.oil leases for BP, royal dutch shell…all APING plantation values of ‘free enterprise” rather than American Capitalism.

The billionaire 2% hoarding 85% of the wealth pissing on the American people and our democratic government, plotting the return of pre-revolutionary France on these shores. Guillotine, anyone?

Thank goodness we learn from our mistakes.

You prefer what? Obama’s version of “trickle down economics”? An economy regulated by a wasteful and inefficient federal government redistributing the wealth? We have seen how well that has worked both in this country and in Europe.

Brobst, please quit repeating your fiction about the top 2% hoarding 85% of the nation’s wealth. It just ain’t true.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

He made it feel OK to hate poor people - quite an accomplishment!?

” An economy regulated by a wasteful and inefficient federal government redistributing the wealth?”

Our ‘wasteful and inefficient’ federal government has been ‘redistributing the wealth’ for years. It’s merely been going UPWARDS, not outwards.

And how do you put numbers on “moral decline” so we can see the correlation, charlie?

An economy regulated by a wasteful and inefficient federal government redistributing the wealth?”

Sorry to break it to you but we’ve been doing that for thirty years. You keep voting people in government who have a problem with it.

Yeah, beenthere. According to the data in your link it’s not 85%, it’s over 90%.

President Reagan’s foreign policy won the cold war for the US. His domestic policies reformed a bloated socialist state that made poor people dependent on a ‘trickle” of aide from the government. (true trickle down theory) The economy revived and our nation was strong. You jealous, hateful, revisionist liberals will never learn what Reagan knew, that a controlling, powerful government can’t solve all your problems, even with the failures of the current President you still refuse to learn. Reagan was one of greatest presidents and your lies will never change.

FDR’s face appears on a dime because he started the March of Dimes to fight polio. RR’s should be on one because, revisionist history notwithstanding, that’s what his concern for the bottom 80% of the population was worth.

Reagan on a personal level was reported by even his “enemies” to be a “nice guy” who folks liked personally. That his policies as Governor and President were reruns of “Death Valley Days”, especially economically, is challenged only by fools. The myths of Reagan, like many myths, have quite a following, that the facts deny.

Of course he’s still with us…always will be….he’s one side of an endless debate over the proper role of government in America.

“‎..(the) modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness” John Kenneth Galbraith

I just looked at the cartoon again. I don’t know where Oliphant was in the late 70’s and early 80’s, but during the Nixon and Carter years, unemployment was creeping up and so was inflation. By the time Reagan became President unemployment was high (don’t know offhand) and inflation was officially 12%, but cost of living benefits were being paid out at over 18% (the unofficial rate of inflation). A home loan could be gotten for 12-13-14%.

Within a few years, everything changed and we entered the biggest economic boom in history and that continued for a very long time….so the cartoon is wrong (a clunker)..maybe someone will give cash for it.. hahahaha

RADISH: I don’t think that Reagan recycled trash either. Just so you’d know.

Reagan lucked out when he happened to be president when the USSR collapsed. His revisionists still try to give him credit for his luck. As for me, Reagan is a deadbeat who owes me money. Think he’ll ever pay his debt to me?

Compared to the current bumper crop of Presidential hillocks that have since succeeded him, Reagan is comparatively a mountain.

Raised taxes, cut and ran from Lebanon, negotiated with terrorists, granted amnesty to illegal aliens, hero of the right wing.

Clark Kent – remember what happened when we rebelled in this country – they shot us (i.e., Kent State, etc).

Gregg W – Reagan was a huge part of the decline (moral and otherwise), but it was begun a couple of decades earlier by the coup orchestrated against Kennedy and carried out by buds of the Bushes.

Phillip Wroblewski – unemployment was not high during the Carter administration – inflation was very high. And that nasty high inflation was paying something like 14% interest on bank accounts. Unemployment rose to the rafters when RR took office.

Radish the kibitzer – thanx for the history lesson (and reminder of what it was really like).

“President Reagan was pro-life so will live forever. Every pro-abort president will be swept into the dustbin of history once unborn Americans receive full civil rights.”

Reagan also divorced. And “every anti-LGBT President will be swept into the dustbin of history once already-born LGBT Americans receive full civil rights.”

AuH2O - When one of Reagan’s aides referred to “Supply Side Economics” as “Trickle Down” Reagan was appalled - not because it was untrue, but because it was openly admitted. Even Reagan know that Trickle Down didn’t work, and he was one of our less intelligent Presidents. Nobody - I mean NOBODY - characterizes Mr. Obama’s plan as Trickle Down. The money would go directly to the people who need it. THAT is what the GOP objects to.

Authoritarian morals aren’t really morals: absolute obedience to creepy authority figures and absolute intolerance to anyone who dares to disagree, plus the puritanism that is oh so useful to creepy authoritarian types, allowing them to destroy personal autonomy and privacy, giving the state a weird near monopoly on sex and appealing to the most virulent of bigots, the ones, genocide scholars tell us, have the biggest “purity” hangups and are the most easily motivated to violence.

You want morals? Most religions and many atheists ascribe to a real morality of mutual respect, compassion and concern for justice for the poor, the ill, children, those with the least power in society. On sex, they believe in respect and responsibility and also respecting others’ privacy and autonomy.