peterson 0 Posted June 7, 2004 Share Posted June 7, 2004 Seems Reagan has left us. He's being branded the hero for saving the world etc at the mo on the tv. Is that so? I was very uninterested in politics back then (the whole time is a bit of a haze). Link to post Share on other sites
kintaro 0 Posted June 7, 2004 Share Posted June 7, 2004 Who branded him the hero of saving the world Peterson? Link to post Share on other sites
miteyak 0 Posted June 7, 2004 Share Posted June 7, 2004 Oversimplified, selective, biased summary... Positive •engineered an armed race with the soviet union, bankrupting the hegemony and causing the fall of the communist block •through above method, engineered an economic boom propped up by government financed investment in the newly expanded military-industrial complex Negative •created a military-industrial complex that nearly bankrupted America, and one that has yet, even after the fall of the USSR, to be dismantled-in fact, I believe it continues to grow... •covertly (and illegally) backed insurgents in non-right leaning countries leading to countless attrocities against non-combative third world peoples •widely believed to not be bluffing in his 'brinkmanship' with the USSR, and fully prepared to use nuclear weapons, which puts a new angle on whether he was a peace broker or war monger. Quite rightly, Gorbachev gets the peace prize, as it was he that saw the precipice and guided the world from it As I said, limited, biased, and most definitely oversimplified... Link to post Share on other sites
peterson 0 Posted June 7, 2004 Author Share Posted June 7, 2004 Sorry, it was on Fox.... Link to post Share on other sites
Ocean11 0 Posted June 7, 2004 Share Posted June 7, 2004 He was murdered. It wasn't suicide as claimed in the media. He was killed in a Fox News/CIA plot to win sympathy for the Republicans in an election year. Probably. Link to post Share on other sites
kintaro 0 Posted June 7, 2004 Share Posted June 7, 2004 WELL...does any one know if Reagan was the voice behind Mr. Burns on the Simpsons? I think he might have been. Link to post Share on other sites
big-will 7 Posted June 8, 2004 Share Posted June 8, 2004 Good actor. Link to post Share on other sites
big-will 7 Posted June 8, 2004 Share Posted June 8, 2004 Mr Burns on Simpsons is none other than Harry Shearer, bassist from Spinal Tap. In fact, Harry does all of these voices: C. Montgomery Burns Waylon Smithers Ned Flanders Principal Skinner Otto Reverend Lovejoy Dr. Julius Hibbert Kent Brockman Jasper Lenny Edde Rainier Wolfcastle/McBain Scratchy Kang Herman George Bush Judge Snyder Amazing! Here's info on all the voices: http://animatedtv.about.com/library/weekly/aa082901a.htm Link to post Share on other sites
slow 0 Posted June 8, 2004 Share Posted June 8, 2004 Quote: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi asked former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone on Monday to represent Japan at the funeral of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and Nakasone agreed, top government spokesman Hiroyuki Hosoda said. Hosoda said Koizumi determined Nakasone was the best person to represent the Japanese people in view of the so-called "Ron-Yasu" close relationship between Reagan and the former prime minister. Ah, I remember "Ron-Yasu" close relationship. Link to post Share on other sites
veronica 2 Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Tell us more! Link to post Share on other sites
Davo 1 Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Different relationship but I loved it when Koizumi came back from "the ranch" all excited by the fact that his new buddy had given him a baseball. Just like a little kid meeting his hero . So easily bought by "giddy-up George", the latest make-believe Republican cowboy. Link to post Share on other sites
green 0 Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Bush as a hero. That is hard to imagine. Link to post Share on other sites
kintaro 0 Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 Thanks for the info big-will! you seem to know your Simpsons! Link to post Share on other sites
Thunderpants 0 Posted June 9, 2004 Share Posted June 9, 2004 my man Paul Krugman of N.Y. Times has done it again read here Reading requres a login, registering is free, and NYT will NOT spam you, do your self a favor and register, read and get enlightend (spelling?) ATB Thunderp. Link to post Share on other sites
Ocean11 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Let's also not forget how much liberty Reagan brought to polluters and how this helped to start the trend of smog killing off national parks. Link to post Share on other sites
enderzero 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Reagan's legacy was of smaller government (on the domestic front at least). When he was governor of California he did everything he could to kill the public University system in the state and almost succeeded. Some say he had his eyes set on the public school system as well. He also made huge cutting reforms to welfare and social security. Reagan was, however, a very likable guy. He had a brilliant sense of humor unlike most politicians. Over the last few days there has been a media blitz of Reagan and I have heard mentioned a number of time, "let's forget about Reagan's politics and just celebrate the man." I think on the occasion of somebody's death that isn't such a bad idea. Link to post Share on other sites
Ocean11 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 > "let's forget about Reagan's politics and just celebrate the man." Which is to say, let's put our blinkers on and wallow in harmful nostalgia. The man happened to be a politician which is why everybody knows who he was. If you want just to celebrate a man, why not celebrate any other man who just happened to have died on that day and who had a few good bon mots to his name (sans Peggy Noonan )? The dissolution of the USSR could have been handled in any number of ways, but the way Reagan 'chose' to do it (ignoring for the moment the massive hubris of assuming his policy had any effect) is triumphantly proclaimed to have been the only way. A lot of people who lived through Reagan as politically sentient beings gasped at his grostesque oversimplifications and crudity, much touted then as now as 'great communication' (Hitler was more honest in calling it the Big Lie). Reagan and Thatcher was bad times by any yardstick. I expect when Thatcher becomes Whiskey Pickle we'll have to go through the same nonsense again. Link to post Share on other sites
enderzero 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 I am certainly no fan of Reagan politics... but I thought we we putting aside the politics for now. But Reagan was also a very successful actor and talento from his time very much well known before he entered politics. Link to post Share on other sites
sanjo 2 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 How was his acting? Link to post Share on other sites
miteyak 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 I was under the impression that, without the president thing, his acting would have been forgotten, second rate at best. Would he really have got any airtime merely as an actor? Link to post Share on other sites
enderzero 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 It was well before my time but he had a pretty extensive career in movies with 59 listed on IMDB. But I think he was also a bit like a Japanese talento, appear on a number of talk shows and playing parts in things like soldier interest stories during the war. ...I never thought I would end up sounding like such a Reagan fan. bleh. Link to post Share on other sites
Thunderbird2 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Los Angeles Times today: "Reagen allowed AIDS to spread." Link to post Share on other sites
NoFakie 45 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Over now to our Nicaraguan correspondent Quote: FATHER MIGUEL D'ESCOTO: First of all, let me start out by saying that, of course, Reagan is now dead. And I, for one, would like to say only nice things about him. I'm not insensitive to the feelings of many U.S. people mourning president Reagan, but as I pray that god in his infinite mercy and goodness forgive him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not ever forget the crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled freedom and democracy. More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but in fact the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples. Reagan, as you mentioned just a few minutes ago, was known as the great communicator, and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non-existent synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny. Of course, as I say this, I'm quite aware that to the people of say for example, Project for a New American Century, that is counted as a big plus. Because of Reagan and his spiritual heir George W. Bush, the World today is far less safe and secure as it has ever been. Reagan in fact was an international outlaw. He came to the Presidency of the United States shortly after Samosa, a Dictator that the U.S. has imposed over Nicaragua for practically half a century; had been deposed by Nicaraguan Nationalists under the leadership of the Sandinista Liberation Front. To Reagan Nicaragua had to be re-conquered. He blamed Carter for having lost Nicaragua, as if Nicaragua ever belonged to anyone else other than the Nicaraguan people. That was then the beginning of this war that Reagan invented, and mounted and financed and directed, the Contra War. About which he continually lied to the People. Helping the United States people to be the most ignorant people around the world. I said ignorant, I don't say not intelligent. But the most ignorant people around the world about what the United States does abroad. People don't even begin to see -- if they did, they would rebel. And so, he lied to the people, as Bush lies to the people today and as they push on, thinking that the United States is above every law, human or divine. And we took the United States, Reagan's United States, his government to court, the World Court. I was Foreign Minister at that time here in Nicaragua. I was responsible for that. And the United States government received the harshest sentence, the harshest condemnation ever in the history of world justice. In spite of the fact that the United States since the early 1920's has been proclaiming to the world that one of the proofs of its moral superiority as compared to other countries around the world is the fact that it abides by the international law and was obedient to the world court when the United States was brought to the world court in Nicaragua and received the condemnation that the United States failed to heed the sentence and they till owe Nicaragua by now must be between 20,000 and $30,000 million at the time when we left government that the damages caused by that Reagan war was over $17 billion, and this, according to very moderate estimators of damage, people from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, people from Harvard University and from Oxford and from the University of Paris basically this is the team that was pulled together to estimate the damage. The United States was ordered to pay for the damage. Bush never even wanted to talk to me about it. I said, "Well, let's have a meeting so that you comply with your sentence of the court." He said to me in two different letters that there was nothing to talk about. So, Reagan did damage to Nicaragua beyond the imaginations of the people who are hearing me now. The ripple effects of that; criminal murderous interventions in my country will go on for what, 50 years or more. To finance the above, Reagan flooded the USA with hard drugs, with all their accompanying social problems. FWIW, the Reagan White House also vetoed Senate plans for sanctions against Saddam Hussein after he gassed the Kurds. Link to post Share on other sites
Ocean11 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 But he had a nice smile and did real good for the Jelly Belly jelly bean company. Interesting that the Nicaraguan fella mentioned that Dubya is Reagan's spiritual heir - I was wondering where all this fake nostalgia was coming from, and pondered if some of it was part of, um, a vast Republican conspiracy. Link to post Share on other sites
miteyak 0 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Yes, and unfortunately the democrats can't say a word lest they be dubbed 'unpatriotic' (euphamism for enemy of the state). Those contra boys make the current Iraqi insurgents look like a contingent of salvation army soup servers... it's always amazed me how to this day the whole situation down there escaped the attention of mainstream America... Democracy - but not in my back yard Link to post Share on other sites
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