| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
|
 Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 2:13 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| Quote: | nw30 wrote:
BHO will probably go down in history as lying to the public more than any other president in history. |
Could this be just ignorance and not prejudice? So we are supposed to ignore the lying of Bush, Cheney, and Scooter Libby as they not only lied about weapons of mass destruction, but outed the CIA agent who revealed the lies? How about Saint Ronnie then? Of course he lied to Congress--and broke the law--to sell arms to the Contras. A foreign policy disaster. But was that all? Not hardly:
| Quote: | Also forgotten is Reagan’s own embarrassing propensity to just make things up. Reagan was a dunce and a fabricator. One of his most famous assertions was, “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” and he maintained, wrongly, that sulfur dioxide emitted from Mount St. Helens was greater than that emitted by cars over a 10-year period. (In one day, cars emit 40 times what Mount St. Helens released in a day even at its peak activity.) In 1985, Reagan praised the P.W. Botha’s apartheid regime of South Africa for eliminating segregation, a blunder then-Press Secretary Larry Speakes had to correct a few days later.
Other examples abound: During a 1983 Congressional Medal of Honor ceremony Reagan told a story about military heroism that New York Daily News columnist Lars-Erik Nelson wrote never happened. Nelson had checked the citations on all 434 Congressional Medals of Honor awarded during WWII. The scene Reagan described did appear, however, in the 1944 film A Wing and a Prayer. Larry Speakes’ response? “If you tell the same story five times, it’s true.”
And let’s not forget the wages of “trickle down” economics and “Reaganomics,” from which we have still not recovered. In 1982, the Congressional Budget Office found that taxpayers earning under $10,000 lost an average of $240 from Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts, while those earning more than $80,000 gained an average of $15,130. By that fall, the jobless rate hit 10.1 percent–the worst in 42 years, and a year later 11.9 million were out of work. In 1983, the country’s poverty rate rose to 15 percent, the highest level since the mid-’60s. In 1984, a congressional study reported that cuts in welfare had pushed more than 500,000 people–the majority of them children–into poverty. Then-Attorney General Ed Meese’s response? “I don’t know of any authoritative figures that there are hungry children … people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that’s easier than paying for it.”
The neocons would have us believe that Reagan was also a foreign policy genius. Space prevents me from detailing his administration’s adventures and blunders in Grenada, in Beirut and the visit to the Nazi cemetery in Bitburg. So let’s just remember aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, whom Reagan likened to the Founding Fathers, and the revelation that the CIA had produced a manual that taught them, in part, how to kidnap and “neutralize” government officials. Iran-Contra–the secret and illegal selling of weapons to our sworn enemy, Iran, to then fund the Contras–was both a constitutional disaster and a foreign policy blunder about which we were asked to believe Reagan knew nothing. His administration was also thoroughly corrupt: Eight senior officials in his administration were indicted.
Fabrication, lying, cruel and counterproductive policies at home and abroad, bloating of the deficit, widening the gap between rich and poor: These are the Reagan legacy. As Republican candidates seek to wear his mantle, their Democratic opponents need to remind Americans exactly what they are putting on.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Susan J. Douglas is a professor of communications at the University of Michigan and an In These Times columnist. Her latest book is Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work is Done (2010).
More information about Susan J. Douglas
|
So which is it NW--prejudice or ignorance? You can't take the truth. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
pueno
Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 2:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nw30 wrote: |
When you've got nothing, you've always got Bush.
LOL! |
For once, you got something right, Mr. Turdy. 
Bush really was nothing.
Nothing but stupid and a liar.
. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nw30
Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 3:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Thanks for the history lesson girls, but that won't even compare.
They didn't go in front of the public, knowing they were lying and repeatedly spew the same crap time, after time, after time, after time, after time, after time, for 3 years, over something that will effect every single person in this country directly.
Not even close. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
windoggi
Joined: 22 Feb 2002
Posts: 2743
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 3:20 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nw30 wrote: | something that will effect every single person in this country directly.
|
You mean healthcare that won't deny you or put you in the poorhouse when you're sick for too long? That something?
Yeah, thats about the worst thing thats ever happened! The Horror!
_________________
/w\ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 4:19 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| He made it clear. Prejudice. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nw30
Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 7:13 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Just.................................................................... honesty. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pueno
Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 7:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nw30 wrote: |
They didn't go in front of the public, knowing they were lying and repeatedly spew the same crap time, after time, after time, after time, after time, after time, for 3 years, over something that will effect every single person in this country directly. |
Oh, you mean something like, "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction!!"
Something like that? Something that every American must pay for for years and years and years and years and years and years? Is that what you had in mind?
. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nw30
Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 7:25 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Keep going, you're doing great! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
windoggi
Joined: 22 Feb 2002
Posts: 2743
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 7:58 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nw30 wrote: |
Keep going, you're doing great! |
yer mother wears combat boots!
_________________
/w\ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pueno
Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 02, 2013 7:58 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nw30 wrote: |
Keep going, you're doing great! |
| nw30 wrote: |
...over something that will effect every single person in this country directly. |
BTW....... the correct word is "A F F E C T."
You keep showing us over and over the EFFECTS of substandard education and how it AFFECTS your credibility... or maybe it was a student unable to internalize or understand simple instruction.
But, please keep going, you're doing great!
. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
|
Search
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Register
