Geo

Let’s remember the real Ronald Reagan
Comments not of Mark Harmon added in parenthesis

Mark Harmon
Columnist
Posted: July 01, 2016
28 Comments
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The landscape is littered with items named for Ronald Reagan: highways, bridges, buildings, even an aircraft carrier. Brushing aside irony, we even named an airport after a person who fired air traffic controllers.
It is time for a sober reconsideration of our 40th president — a review independent of the hubris of right-wing radio gabbers and the near-deification at Republican gatherings.
(Unlike Trump,)
The real Reagan would not be welcome in today's GOP. He gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented migrants, banned fully automatic rifles, supported both a ban on assault weapons and Brady law gun restrictions, raised taxes 11 times, compromised with Democrats and called for the elimination of nuclear weapons, but just like Trump is trying to do to satisfy the greedy 1% at your expense,

Reagan gave us a 186 percent increase in the national debt, adding $1.86 trillion to that tally. His backers blame the Democratic Congress for the budgets of the era, but overall the proposed totals by Reagan and the Democrats were remarkably similar. The difference lay in priorities. Reagan gave us our first and most spectacular failure with trickle-down economics. He massively increased military spending, shifted taxes from the wealthy to the middle class and slashed key investments, including student grants.
(Like Trump,)
The Reagan administration also set records for scandals, specifically the investigation, indictment or conviction of 138 administration officials, modern records in each category. The most egregious scandal was Iran-Contra, the secret and deliberate violation of several laws to sell arms to the Ayatollah's Iran, raising money to support guerillas in Central America.
Reagan's foreign policy record includes a disastrous mission in Lebanon that left dead 241 U.S. servicemen when their barracks was targeted by two suicide bombers.
Reagan initially offered little more than bluster when negotiating with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, so Gorbachev went forward on his own with arms reduction and reform/openness plans.
Let's also recall Reagan's February 1985 Bitburg fiasco. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had suggested a concentration camp visit during Reagan's visit, but Reagan instead spoke at a cemetery, pressing forward even after he'd been told the tombstones included 49 members of the Waffen-SS, a group declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg Trials. (Remind you of anyone?)
Reagan's career also was dismal on civil rights. He kicked off his 1980 presidential run in Neshoba County, Mississippi, the location where three civil rights activists were slaughtered. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert says going there and proclaiming support for "states' rights" was clear code. Reagan had opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As president, he opposed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday, tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act, and fought to keep tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination.
Reagan also vetoed both sanctions on South Africa's apartheid government and a 1988 bill expanding federal civil rights guarantees. Congress overrode both vetoes. Reagan also notoriously turned a blind eye to the AIDS crisis ravaging the country.
Perhaps the best summary of those Reagan years was penned by Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby in the song "The End of the Innocence." They wrote, "They're beating plowshares into swords / For this tired old man that we elected king / Armchair warriors often fail / And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales / The lawyers clean up all details / Since daddy had to lie."

Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

Damn Republicans want prosperity again.

Bastards.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

We don't care what Mark Harmon (whoever he is ) thinks. We care what we think...as individuals. We care about what our family, friends and neighbors think. Who is Mark Harmon and why would we care what he thinks?

It occurs to me...why do you care what Mark Harmon (whoever he is ) thinks?

What do you think?

Harmon's just another talking head. Dime a dozen.

What you think, however, is not.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

Damn!

E

Just another leftist hack job. Imagine, he couldn't find one thing he liked about President Reagan. This guy must be so left wing that if he had to go to the john, and found the men's door to the right of the women's door, he'd climb out a window on the left and pi$$ in the nearest alley, left side of course.

PoppaGringo Loc: Muslim City, Mexifornia, B.R.

Yes, they just aren't as holy as the left thinks they are. Of course, saying the Left thinks is an oxymoron.

missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore

Hang um high . How dare they want to dislodge all our couch sitters .
Thuggery I say . Plain and simple. Thuggery by people who produce stuff .
We don't need no stinken stuff from them . We got Chinese stuff to consume .

Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

Damned sorry way to ruin a good day of eating Cheetos and waiting for the EBT to charge up.

missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore

I didn't look at this angle . On second thought . Hang them low . Low enough that the tips of their toes
are all that is touching ground . Yeah . That's what they should get .

PoppaGringo Loc: Muslim City, Mexifornia, B.R.

Why sully the ground? Kep them an inch off the ground.

missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore

How about a compromise . Make that a half inch so if they really stretch and maybe bounce a little
they could almost feel ground.

PoppaGringo Loc: Muslim City, Mexifornia, B.R.

I'll buy that.

crazylibertarian Loc: Florida by way of New York & Rhode Island

Just for starters, Barry Goldwater also opposed that 1964 Civil Rights Bill on constitutional grounds & he predicted it would lead to quotas, which it did. He demonstrated from the wording how it would. (I know The Constitution doesn't matter to progressives unless it can be twisted to justify intrusions into our private lives, in pursuit of the Proletarian Paradise.)

Hubert Humphrey was angling for the Vice-Presidential slot on Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential ticket and did LBJ's bidding in shepherding it through the Senate. He stated that if it did lead to quotas he would eat a copy on the floor of the Senate. It did but Humphrey's diet remained unchanged.

A black woman at the time said that she didn't want to go where she wasn't wanted and many blacks felt the same way about both the 1964 & 1965 Civil Rights bills. Goldwater had been major sponsor and supporter of all the previous civil rights bills and the Arizona NAACP had personally & publicly thanked him for his efforts in behalf of civil rights. He became, nonetheless, a pariah for the Left.

As far as Reagan's appearance in Neshoba County, Mississippi, I lived there. The overwhelming majority of people I spoke to were horrified by the slaying of those three civil rights workers. It helped to bring healing to the area and much the same could be said about his appearance at Bitburg.

Yes, the SS and Gestapo were horrible organizations but then there was Oskar Schindler & I am sure there were many others who were decent human beings but saw that road simply as a career opportunity. You should note that at Nuremberg, no one under the rank of captain wasprosecuted for those reasons.

I am sure that you are an admirer of Planned Parenthood. Are you ware of its racist origins? I doubt it.

And just so you are aware, after the bombing of that Marine Barracks in Lebanon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged a full scale response. Reagan resisted it.

Also, The House of Representatives was Democratic throughout all of Reagan's years & it has the power of the purse. Those budgets would never have gotten through without Democratic approval.