In Washington, there's power in a name

Ronbo Reagan was one of the biggest phonies to ever be President.

He didn't bring down the USSR, he just happened to be the President who cashed in on 30 years worth of hard work done BEFORE HIS TIME IN OFFICE.

The GOP love affair with this dope cracks me up, they should just dig up his body and run ZOMBIE REAGAN for President in 08, "he" couldn't do any worse than the robots that they're running now are.

I say give em another shrine. But seriously, Reagan CAN NOT be compared to Roosevelt. Reagan did not accomplish anything major besides racking up major debts building nuclear missiles, training the mujahideen (Al Qaida/Taliban/Terr'r'rists), and supplying Saddham with WMD's. How can that be compared to bringing the US from the brink of self implosion to the most powerful country on the planet?!?!?! And the destruction of Germany and Japan?!?!?! More delusions of grandeur for conservatives grasping at straws.

These people can't even remember that we left Vietnam because the whole action was vast lie after vast lie that was exposed by DoD personnel (Daniel Ellsberg, David Hackworth, John Vann etc) that resulted in Nixon leaving office (Just like bush and Dick should). Instead, they blame it on the "naive peace movement". These people do not deserve to live in this great country. Dick/Bush and the people they are in bed with are the only enemy that our nation faces.

It's simply laughable that doddering Ronnie Reagan is worthy of anything more than a zinc plated outhouse. He already has an airport and expressway named for him. That's 2 things too many.

John E,
He didn't bring down the USSR, he just happened to be the President who cashed in on 30 years worth of hard work done BEFORE HIS TIME IN OFFICE.

I get a kick of that kind of talk. The very people who predicted that Reagan's military build-up would not bring down the Soviet Union are saying, after the Soviet Union was brought down, that Reagan just happened to be president when it happened.

The fact is that no one believed, when Reagan came to office, that the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse.

The fact is that no one believed, when Reagan came to office, that the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse.

Posted by S Sherman July 11, 2007 3:10 PM

Sherm,
Anyone who was paying attention, DID KNOW.

Umm, John E and S. Sherman, you may want to recheck your history books. Reagan wasn't in power when the Soviet Union fell. George H. W. Bush was.

And for the record, I give GHWB a good chunk of credit for his handling of the fall of the eastern block. The guy had the good sense to know that sometimes keeping out of the middle of things is the best response. Had the US tried to more directly involve itself in the events at the time of the collapse it could have triggered any number of un pleasant consequences. Letting the Eastern Europeans sort themselves out, and create their own new structures was a very wise decision.

Unfortunately that sort of wisdom seems not to have been passed down to his son.

The House Tuesday passed a bill ordering the Interior Department to study sites that played important roles in Chavez's life, so it could determine an appropriate way to memorialize them."

Not a lot of money, but where's the concern over the deficit?

Posted by: Terry | July 11, 2007 3:29 PM

A lesson here is what happened after we pulled out of Vietnam -- Communism did not prosper, but died a slow death, because that was is its inevitable, and very slow, course. Pulling out Iraq won't mean that radical Islamic terrorism wins. I still think what eventually won out over communism can overcome radical elements in the Middle East -- man's desire to live freely, hold a decent job, take care of his family, and buy Coca Cola and blue jeans. Capitalism leads to democracy, it is the natural order of things. Democracy can't succeed when half the country is unemployed and fighting each other. Unfortunately, playing flight commander dress-up and landing on an aircraft carrier doesn't hasten this slow and painful process. Btw, funny that Cheney talks about the sad era of Vietnam like he was doing anything else but hiding behind multiple student deferrments.

Are they serious? They really want a site to memorialize Cesar Chavez? I think that's great - as long as they memorialize him for that which he really represented.

It would only be slightly sarcastic to suggest that an appropriate memorial would be to build a fence along the Mexican-American border in his memory. Another possibility would be to build a larger academy to train border patrol agents and again, name it after him. No, I am not kidding.

Cesar Chavez hated illegal immigration. He used to send his own farm workers to the border to interdict illegal immigrants much like today’s “minute-men.” Why would he do this if he was Mexican-American extraction himself? The answer is simple.

He hated illegal immigration because it provided large agribusinesses with cheap labor to act as "scab" strike-breakers in case of a UFW strike. Only by limiting the labor force to local, “legal” farm workers could Chavez ever hope to force the large agribusinesses to listen to him and improve the working conditions and pay of his union members.

Cesar Chaves was, after all – and above all, a union leader first. I’m a little surprised more union leaders haven’t followed suit.

John E,
Anyone who was paying attention, DID KNOW.

You are rewriting history.

When Reagan was proposing his military build-up, I do not remember any Democrats opposing it on the grounds that it was unnecessary because the Soviet Union was collapsing.

On the contrary, the USSR was on the march, in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, in Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

kb:

I respectfully suggest that you are engaged in wishful thinking. Communism rose and, for the most part, fell within the space of a single century. Former communists could be seduced by dreams of jeans, Coca Cola, and the general vision of capitalist prosperity – largely because communism was a failed economic policy.

In contrast, the idea of militant Islam was formed about 1,400 years ago and is still with us today. Many rich Islamic countries flourish in a capitalist world market without having forsaken their militant, Islamic ideals. Saudi Arabia, with all of its wealth derived from the capitalist market system, still harbors some of the most militant Islamists in the world. This is because, unlike communism, Islam is a religion and not an economic policy at all. As such, your theory that that capitalism inevitably leads to democracy has already been blown out of the water by the historical record.

Anyone who wants peace in Iraq has to stop the fighting there. According to the ISG report, there is less likelihood that the internecine factions will become more peaceful, or more likely to put down their arms, if we depart. So, now what do you propose we do? We had better do something, even if it is to redouble our diplomatic initiatives with the region and the rest of the world as suggested by the ISG report and, more recently, Hillary Clinton. Iraq will still need a lot of help even when it stops getting our help.

"Anyone who wants peace in Iraq has to stop the fighting there." Well, I'd like a million dollars, but merely wishing for something isn't going to make it happen.

John W, I propose that YOU go to Iraq. Alternatively I propose that we begin withdrawing the troops right now and let the chips fall where they may. It was and is a gigantic failure and there is nothing we can do about it. You cannot un poop the bed.

Yes, there will be bloodshed, but they have that already. Yes, there will be chaos, but they have that too. The fact is that we are wasting precious blood and treasure mediating a civil war. Staying the course is not a strategy. It's time to end the Republican war and occupation of Iraq.

weinerdog43,

You say, "Yes, there will be bloodshed, but they have that already."

And when everyone forsakes the place, there will be a lot more - enough to make Rwanda and Bosnia, combined, look like a playground fight.

You say, "Yes, there will be chaos, but they have that too. "

And there will be more. So much so, that it will become impossible for anyone other than a dictator worse than Saddam Hussein to restore any form of order.

You say, "The fact is that we are wasting precious blood and treasure mediating a civil war. Staying the course is not a strategy. It's time to end the Republican war and occupation of Iraq."

You may be right. My last post could be read to suggest (erroneously) that our presence is necessary to fix the problem. It really isn't. In fact, it might be counterproductive - although not for the selfish reasons you suggest. I was just pointing out what the ISG said with regard to our presence to illustrate that the fighting will not go away unless there is some force to rein in the violence. If we can't help Iraq ourselves, then we had better recruit others, especially from the region, to help implement a security plan of some kind.

The bottom line is that we had better stay engaged even if the solution no longer involves us being there. We will have a lot more blood on our hands if we don't. As I've said before, it would be highly immoral for us to have gone in there, wreck the place, cause tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of deaths, injuries and/or displacements, and then have nothing to say but "oops" as we dash for the exit.

We broke it. We had better do something to fix it. And, by all means, let's not make it worse.

weinerdog43:

I forgot to tell you. I finished my military service about 30 years ago. I'm so old now that they wouldn't let me go even if I wanted to. So you can stick your ersatz "go-there-if-you-really-believe-it" nonsense.

When it comes to Roosevelt vs. Reagan, Roosevelt doesn't have a leg to stand on.

When it comes to Roosevelt vs. Reagan, Roosevelt doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Posted by: Todd | July 12, 2007 4:48 AM

That's actually a pretty funny pun, but I hope you aren't really suggesting that undoing the New Deal (Reagan) is more worthy than instituting the consumer and social safeguards that brought America out of the Great Depression and made it the strongest nation on Earth.

reagen's domestic policies undid and underminded a lot of the new deal goals... what reagen did, essentially, was cut health and welfare programs and transfer these funds to military spending which also resulted in huge deficits by the end of the reagan decade... sure, taxes were lower after reagen, and homeowners like that... but these effects only benefit a minority of our country... our country's majority are the landless renters who have still not recovered fully from the funding cuts of the reagan era... so essentially republicans love reagan because they protect the rich/minority interests at the expense of the middle and lower classes in our society... and then we name airports and libraries after him...

Legacy:

It was freakin' World War II that got us out of the Great Depression and made us the strongest nation on the earth. It wasn't Roosevelt's G** D****d New Deal. The Great Depression actually got worse while F.D.R. played with the economy in his alphabet soup.

Please stop perpetuating the false idea that the New Deal made this country great. We are still paying for it today. In a few short years, the New Deal's crowning disaster - Social Security - is going to go belly up because there will be more people retiring and not enough people working to keep that pyramid scheme afloat.

John W.,

If Social Security was/is such a failure why was it enacted?

You don't suppose it had something to do with people starving to death in the USA?

Doug:

Social security was designed as a retirement system, and not a means of alleviating starvation. As retirement systems go, it is a dismal failure any way one wants to look at it.

First of all, the system as it now exists isn't the way it was started. It was started as a "fund" to collect retirement money. However, Congress later amended the Social Security system to allow them to steal from the cookie jar, so to speak, to spend the money on other things. In the process, it created the current pyramid scheme we now have. Social security is not funded except for the money that is currently being paid in by workers. That’s why its called a “pay as you go” system. Money is paid out to retirees, or those who have qualified for other social security benefits. It is not saved for today’s workers. We have more people on social security than before, as the population gets older. That has altered the worker to beneficiary ratio to such a degree that, unless things drastically change soon: 1) payroll taxes will have to be increased, 2) benefits of today's workers will be reduced by the time they retire, or 3) other revenues will have to be generated to support the system. Either that, or the system will go belly up.

Second, as an investment, Social Security is a joke. It doesn’t pay back very much. Even putting your money into a bank to earn 4 to 5 percent interest is a vast improvement over the return paid from social security, even after one accounts for cost of living increases.

Third, Social Security works from a rather repugnant notion – namely, that the unwashed mass of American People are incapable of taking care of themselves, and so the much wiser elite in the government must make life choices for them. I wouldn’t trust some of the lying, thieving, incompetent charlatans now in Congress teach my dog how to poop; and they are going to make decisions as to how my life should be run? No thanks. [This is why I don’t like universal health care, either. It’s hell waiting to happen.]

Fourth, despite the decisions out of the Supreme Court, wherein F.D.R. coerced the Court to hold Social Security constitutional, it is definitely NOT constitutional. The Court sided with F.D.R. on the theory that the non-existent “welfare clause” granted the Federal Government the power to re-define its powers by spending money. That is a theory that was expressly rejected by the founders of the federal government, as shown in the Federalist Papers and the Ratification Conventions in the various states. The Court also tried to justify the Social Security system on the ground that it was a “time of emergency.” But, as with all other “emergency” powers granted in the Constitution, the power ends when the emergency ends; and the Great Depression has come to an end. Lastly, the Court justified Social Security on the ground that the States consented to it. In the meantime, the Supreme Court has correctly held that “consent” can never enlarge the federal government’s powers beyond those found in the Constitution and, thus, cannot justify unconstitutional legislation. There is a constitutional way to do it, but that is not the way it is currently being done.

If we managed our monetary affairs the way Congress does, police would show up at our doors to arrest us for fraud and embezzlement. It has been proven, over time, that it is Congress, and not the people or the States, that is incapable of running government in an efficient and accountable manner. The less we entrust to the federal government, the more likely we will have government that is both efficient and directly accountable to the voters [maybe with the exception of some places with big political machines ... like Illinois.]