Alternate memories of Reagan

[paisley]

from the Village Voice

Ronald Reagan is the man who destroyed America's sense of reality -- a paltry target, all in all, given our predilections. It only took an actor: the real successor to John Wilkes Booth. In our bones, we had always been this sort of bullshit-craving country anyhow, founded on abstractions: not land (somebody else's), not people (Red Rover, Red Rover, send Emma Lazarus right over), not even shared history (nostalgia isn't the same thing, and try pulling that Civil War Shinola anywhere west of the Rio Grande). Just monumental words and wordy monuments, with two convenient oceans between them and circumstance; from Nat Turner's status as three-fifths of a man -- even though we ended up hanging all of him -- to Reagan's child Lynndie England (b. 1983, the year we invaded Grenada and lost 241 Marines in Lebanon), any shortfall could be blamed on something lost in translation. But it was Reagan, whose most profound Freudian slip was the immortal "Facts are stupid things," who beguiled us into living in the theme park full-time, and so much for the Declaration of Independence's prattle about "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" -- actually the only time we ever expressed much concern for those. Since his 1980 opponent, Jimmy Carter, was about the sorriest embodiment of the reality principle imaginable -- Three's Company's Mr. Roper on the world-historical stage -- facts didn't have a prayer.

[hamilton]

It's incredible how quickly people forgot the Iran-Contra affair, eh? It was only the biggest crisis to hit the White House since Watergate, after all... :: ::

"I... don't remember..."

[Vermontdave]

The right-wing, ditto-head, schmucks down here, are trying to out do themselves by lionizing this man.

It's one thing to show respect at someone's passing, but it's totally fucked to somehow believe Reagan was a great president. If W gets re-appointed he'll be the new face on the $10ustinkin bill.

(insert Howard Dean scream here)

peace

[hamilton]

I read an interesting article the other day in some newspaper (maybe the Globe, maybe the Star, I don't recall) which opined that Reagan's death could have a negative effect on Bush's campaign - because people will compare Bush to Reagan, and realize that he doesn't measure up to the Gipper. So perhaps this lionization of Reagan might work in our favour after all...

[kung]

If we're asking ourself whether Bush lives up to Reagan or not we are all severely fucked.

[hamilton]

Well, I'm not asking myself, but I'm sure some Republican Americans might be asking themselves. But you're right... we're fucked either which way, really.

[kung]

Brave New World

[kung]

66 (Unflattering) things about Ronald Reagan, by David Corn

The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt.

Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, "homeless by choice," Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy's astrologer.

Drug tests, lie detector tests, Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the S&L scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig "in control," silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, "mistakes were made."

Michael Deaver's conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger's conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger's five-count indictment, Ed Meese ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime"), Donald Regan (women don't "understand throw-weights"), education cuts, massacres in El Salvador.

"The bombing begins in five minutes," $640 Pentagon toilet seats, African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent), Reader's Digest, C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed), 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran/contra. "Facts are stupid things," three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, S.D.I., Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.

[Stapes]

While he was running for office in 1980, candidate Reagan announced during an interview with televangelist Jim Bakker that "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon." But that certainly wasn't the first time. At a 1971 banquet for California state senator James Mills, then-Governor Reagan broke it all down for the honoree during the dessert course:

"In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off.

"Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.

"For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons."

Ronald Reagan's Presidential Pardons

Albert Alkek Clemency for withholding information from federal officials regarding an oil price-fixing scheme.

Gilbert Dozier Commuted sentence for extortion and racketeering.

W. Mark Felt Clemency for authorizing FBI agents to break into Vietnam protestors' offices without warrants.

Junior Johnson Pardoned for liquor offences committed in the 1950s.

Edward Miller Clemency for authorizing FBI agents to break into Vietnam protestors' offices without warrants.

George Steinbrenner Clemency for making illegal contributions to Richard M. Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign.

Timeline

6 Feb 1911 Ronald Reagan born, Tampico IL.

1932 Graduates Eureka College.

25 Jun 1940 Marries actress Jane Wyman two months after knocking her up.

4 Jan 1941 Daughter Maureen Reagan born.

18 Mar 1945 Son Michael Reagan born.

9 Dec 1945 Ronald Reagan receives an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army. He had spent World War II in Hollywood, acting in military training films.

1948 Divorces Jane Wyman.

4 Mar 1952 Marries actress Nancy Davis.

17 Jul 1955 Ronald Reagan cohosts live coast-to-coast television coverage of the opening day at Disneyland.

20 May 1958 Son Ronald Jr. (Ronald Prescott) born.

10 Oct 1965 California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Fresno Bee as saying: "We should declare war on North Vietnam... It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and be home by Christmas."

20 Oct 1965 California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary."

17 Jun 1966 California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

Nov 1966 Elected Governor of California, the first actor to hold that position.

16 Oct 1967 Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "I have a feeling that we are doing better in the (Vietnam) war than the people have been told."

15 May 1969 Regarding the ongoing student protests at UC Berkeley, California governor Ronald Reagan is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying: "If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with."

3 Oct 1972 "I am very proud to be called a pig. It stands for pride, integrity, and guts." Speech in Oroville, CA.

17 May 1976 Ronald Reagan tells Time magazine: "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say 'But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'"

1979 Ronald Reagan: "The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees."

1980 During an interview with televangelist Jim Bakker on the PTL network, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan predicts that "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon."

15 Feb 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Burlington Free Press as saying: "All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk." The claim is provably false.

14 Apr 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in Time magazine as saying: "History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness." The claim is provably false.

21 Apr 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in Newsweek magazine as saying: "Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G.I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything." The claim is provably false.

10 May 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying: "Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile, with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon." The claim is provably false.

10 Sep 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in Sierra magazine as saying: "Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emissions standards from man-made sources." The claim is provably false.

9 Oct 1980 Ronald Reagan is quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93% of the oxides of nitrogen." The claim is provably false.

20 Oct 1980 Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is quoted in Time magazine as saying: "I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind." The claim is provably false.

24 Oct 1980 During a nationally-televised campaign speech, Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan declares: "Mr. Carter is acting as if he hasn't been in charge for the past three and a half years; as if someone else was responsible for the largest deficit in American history." (Carter's total deficit: $252 billion; Reagan's: $1.4 trillion)

4 Nov 1980 Elected 40th President.

6 Mar 1981 Ronald Reagan's second press conference held, in which names of reporters are drawn out of a jellybean jar. Those not chosen (including Associated Press and two of the Big Three TV networks) mostly boycott the conference in disgust.

4 Feb 1981 Ronald Reagan: "I want you to know that it is not true that the Moral Majority has been trying to exert undue influence. That rumor started recently when Jerry Falwell called me with a suggestion for Ambassador to Iran: the publisher of Penthouse."

30 Mar 1981 President Ronald Reagan shot by John W. Hinckley, Jr. Alexander Haig asserts that he is "in control here", forgetting momentarily about the Consititutional line of succession. The Academy Awards show is postponed one night out of respect for the former thespian and president of the Screen Actors Guild.

27 May 1981 John W. Hinckley attempts suicide with a Tylenol overdose, fails.

19 Oct 1981 Senator John Schmitz from California reveals during a television interview that, if President Reagan's policies fail, "the best we could probably hope for is a military coup, or something like that." He refines his statement somewhat by explaining that he's referring to "a good military coup, not a bad military coup."

23 Nov 1981 After President Reagan vetoes an emergency spending bill which would have prevented a shutdown of the federal government, House Speaker Tip O'Neill tells a reporter: "He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can't even carry on a conversation about the budget. It's an absolute and utter disgrace."

May 1982 President Ronald Reagan declares: "In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn't use it, he was tried for first-degree murder and hung if he was found guilty."

18 May 1982 Ronald Reagan has a small benign polyp removed from his colon.

7 Jun 1982 President Ronald Reagan falls asleep during a meeting with Pope John Paul II.

1983 President Ronald Reagan honors former CIA Director Richard Helms with the National Security Medal. Regarding his 1977 felony conviction for lying to Congress, Helms remarks: "I have no feelings about remorse or exoneration."

7 Mar 1983 President Ronald Reagan tells a group of ultraconservatives that "this country is compelled by scripture and the Lord Jesus Christ to oppose Russia with all military and political means."

21 Sep 1983 Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, describes his staff's racial diversity to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: "We have every mixture you can have. I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." Watt is forced to resign 18 days later over these comments.

31 Jan 1984 President Ronald Reagan tells Good Morning America: "What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice."

6 Mar 1984 Former President Jimmy Carter observes: "President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."

30 Apr 1984 When a student at Shanghai's University of Fudan asks which life experiences best prepared him for being President of the United States, Ronald Reagan replies: "You'd be surprised how much being a good actor pays off."

24 Jul 1984 Ronald Reagan's doctor reveals that the President has a small polyp in his large intestine.

11 Aug 1984 Not realizing that his weekly radio address is already on the air, President Ronald Reagan quips into his live microphone: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

15 Oct 1984 During a campaign stop at a McDonald's restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, President Ronald Reagan asks an aide "What am I supposed to order?"

6 Mar 1985 During a White House briefing on the MX missile, President Ronald Reagan opines: "Nuclear war would be the greatest tragedy, I think, ever experienced by mankind, in the history of mankind."

8 Mar 1985 Another benign polyp is discovered in Ronald Reagan's colon.

18 Apr 1985 "I think that there's nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery [bitburg], where those young men are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis. They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps."

19 Apr 1985 "I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself."

5 May 1985 After giving a speech at the Bergen-Belsen death camp, President Ronald Reagan accompanies German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to the Kolmesh�he military cemetery in Bitburg, Germany. There Reagan lays a wreath in memory of the German war dead. In addition to roughly 2,000 German soldiers of both World Wars, 49 members of the Waffen SS are also buried there.

23 May 1985 President Ronald Reagan personally honors an unlikely duo with the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Mother Teresa and Frank Sinatra.

18 Jun 1985 President Ronald Reagan: "Americans will never make concessions to terrorists -- to do so would only invite more terrorism -- once we head down that path there would be no end to it, no end to the suffering of innocent people, no end to the bloody ransom all civilized people must pay."

12 Jul 1985 Ronald Reagan undergoes surgery to have a benign polyp removed from his colon. During that procedure, surgeons discover another one, which is also removed. It later turns out to have been cancerous.

4 Dec 1985 Anticipating arms control discussions with his Soviet counterpart, President Reagan draws on an extraterrestrial analogy: "[H]ow easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries ..."

17 Jan 1986 Three polyps are discovered in Ronald Reagan's colon.

21 Mar 1986 In an interview with the New York Times, President Ronald Reagan repeats his long-debunked claim: "In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn't use it, he was tried for first-degree murder and hung if he was found guilty."

20 Jun 1986 Surgeons remove two polyps from Ronald Reagan's large intestine.

4 Jan 1987 Ronald Reagan is admitted to the hospital for prostate surgery and the removal of four polyps in his colon.

17 Feb 1987 Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev reveals Reagan's preoccupation with space aliens: "At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion. I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though I think it's early yet to worry about such an intrusion..."

May 1987 According to his authorized biography (published in 2000), Reagan wonders aloud about the AIDS pandemic: "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague... [because] illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments." [Dutch, p. 458]

26 Jun 1987 Two polyps are excised from Ronald Reagan's colon.

15 Sep 1987 During a luncheon with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnatze in the White House, President Reagan once again wondered what would happen if the Earth were under attack from an external threat: "Don't you think the United States and the Soviet Union would be together?"

4 May 1988 During a question-and-answer session in Chicago, President Reagan revisits his 'invaders from space' notion: "I've often wondered, what if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by an outer -- a power from outer space, from another planet. Wouldn't we all of a sudden find that we didn't have any differences between us at all, we were all human beings, citizens of the world, and wouldn't we come together to fight that particular threat?"

9 Dec 1988 Ronald Reagan undergoes surgery to extract a polyp from his large intestine. It is the 15th polyp removed from the President during his tenure.

5 Nov 1994 Reagan announces he has Alzheimer's. The hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow promptly claims responsibility.

5 Jun 2004 With his family by his side, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan dies from Alzheimer's disease and pneumonia complications at his home in Los Angeles, CA. Newly-widowed Nancy Reagan observes: "Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him."

[Chewie]

Manuel Noriega is the biggest concern for me...

how could a gov't endorse, allow and support a known cocaine drug lord? especially during the 80s era of "just say no." and reagans war on drugs???

and then when he starts doing things they don't like, george senior goes into panama and slaughters thousands of innocent panamanians to capture their former puppet and bring him to miami where he's safe and can't talk to the media and probably sold blow in the lot at the nye run to send up to washington!

:: cocksuckers everyone of them!!!!!

[hamilton]

If Larry King were on this board, we could have called this thread "Alternative Memories of Brian Mulroney". Did anyone else see the CNN interview earlier this week when he interviewed Mulroney on the subject of Reagan, and referred to him as, "Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Great Britain"? Classic.

[Stapes]

"A college disc jockey who put on a radio show celebrating Ronald Reagan's death was fired Friday from his position as the station's business manager. Scott Hornyak, a 28-year-old undergraduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, had been suspended indefinitely from his disc jockey job at KSUA-FM after the Sunday show. 'They're firing me because of what I said, and the public's reaction to what I said,' said Hornyak... he berated Reagan, who died June 5, for his foreign policy in Latin America, Iraq and Afghanistan, and for his response to the AIDS epidemic. Hornyak said the show was 'a celebration that Ronald Reagan was dead, was finally dead,' and that he told listeners he wanted to 'walk over the newly laid dirt' on Reagan's grave."

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