Ronald Reagan's Birthday and the Myth of Reagan

[QuickHitCurepon]

The right wing tries to endow him with super powers, but in truth he was an old man with Alzheimer's who didn't even know where he was during the last few years of his presidency. Nancy was calling the shots with the help of fortune tellers she called into the white house to advise her..

It was only in his last year that he began to lose a few faculties. Before that, he was as sharp as ever. His trusted advisors would have picked up any slack in the last months.

Like fortune tellers.

Whatever works.

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

Might be the most moronic statement made by a progressive so far today.

Check how the middle class fared during Reagans tenure

At a young age, someone should have explained to you that correlation does not equal causality.

Yes, the Middle Class STILL did okay DESPITE Reagan, because we hadn't shipped all the good manufacturing jobs out of the country yet.

Ask Fonzie how we adapted.

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

Nobody even dreamed it was possible to defeat the Soviets until Reagan came along.

That's simply not true. People were predicting the disollution of the USSR all the way back to the 1960's, and for the same reason most Empires fall.

There are always predictions by a handful of people.

Yeah, but those people knew what they were talking about, unlike Ronnie Ray-gun.

It doesn't matter if those few knew or not what they were talking about. I obviously meant Americans in general.

 

[JoeB131]

3) Reagan's policies caused more damage than good. Hey remember those "Freedom Fighters" from Afghanistan? ONe of them was Osama Bin Laden.

That is like saying because we gave Timothy McVeigh military training, WE caused the damage.

Um, yeah... if we knew Timmy McVeigh was a dangerous psychopath, and someone enlisted him and gave him explosives training anyway, that would be totally on them.

 

[JoeB131]

Firing the air traffic controllers had absolutely nothing to do with unions overall. Reagan did it to maintain optimal air transportation where nothing less is acceptable.

Maintaining optimal air transportation would have been giving these guys a raise and fixing the problems with air-traffic control they were complaining about.

Instead, we had a decade of a lot of close calls and a few collissions because it was Amatuer Night in the Control Tower.

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

3) Reagan's policies caused more damage than good. Hey remember those "Freedom Fighters" from Afghanistan? ONe of them was Osama Bin Laden.

That is like saying because we gave Timothy McVeigh military training, WE caused the damage.

Um, yeah... if we knew Timmy McVeigh was a dangerous psychopath, and someone enlisted him and gave him explosives training anyway, that would be totally on them.

So you are really saying Reagan should have known in the 80's Bin Laden would become the leader of Al Qaeda?

What does that say about Clinton?

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

Firing the air traffic controllers had absolutely nothing to do with unions overall. Reagan did it to maintain optimal air transportation where nothing less is acceptable.

Maintaining optimal air transportation would have been giving these guys a raise and fixing the problems with air-traffic control they were complaining about.

That is done before they walk off the job and not while they hold the nation hostage to their negotiations.

Instead, we had a decade of a lot of close calls and a few collissions because it was Amatuer Night in the Control Tower.

You are a total moron if you think for 10 years there were any remotely unqualified personnel directing air traffic.

They gradually replaced the supervisors, already experienced stand-ins and military stand-ins with fully trained ones in at most 3 years.

Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization 1968 - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

In the wake of the strike and mass firings, the FAA was faced with the task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired, a hard problem to fix as, at the time, it took three years in normal conditions to train a new controller.[2]

 

[JoeB131]

So you are really saying Reagan should have known in the 80's Bin Laden would become the leader of Al Qaeda?

What does that say about Clinton?

1) Yes, he absolutely should have been concerned about someone who killed in the name of Allah given the problems we already had with religious fanatics in Lebanon and Iran.

2) Clinton actually DID try to do something about Bin Laden. He bombed Al Qaeda assets in Afghanistan and Sudan. And Republicans claimed he was pulling a "Wag-The-Dog" (from the movie of the same name) to distract attention from the Lewinsky Affair.

 

[JoeB131]

You are a total moron if you think for 10 years there were any remotely unqualified personnel directing air traffic.

They gradually replaced the supervisors, already experienced stand-ins and military stand-ins with fully trained ones in at most 3 years.

Air Traffic Control was pretty unsafe for years after Reagan fired the PATCO guys. The new union they let replace them came back with the SAME complaints the PATCO guys did.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

You are entitled to your opinion, but why do you believe that? I gave good reasons why he was greatly responsible already.

1) The USSR did not fall because of anything we did. The USSR Fell because 300 million not-Russians got tired of being ruled by 150 million Russians who just didn't want to bother anymore.

2) Contrary to Reagan's boasts, the fall of the USSR is not something he predicted. In fact, the Army was still publishing "threat" manuals with all these glossy pictures of Russian military hardware and acted like not a thing was wrong. Our intelligence agencies were caught flat-footed when the USSR fell.

3) Reagan's policies caused more damage than good. Hey remember those "Freedom Fighters" from Afghanistan? ONe of them was Osama Bin Laden.

If you were old enough or not brain dead at the time, you'd be ecstatic the Soviets are gone.

Sorry, I find a world where big corporations have more power than nation states MUCH scarier.

Bin Laden wasn't Mujaheddin you fucking liar

 

[JoeB131]

Bin Laden wasn't Mujaheddin you fucking liar

Bin Laden fought in Afghanistan, and he and other Arab "volunteers" were recruited by the CIA from all over the middle east.

The reason why bin Laden was able to build a power base (Fun Fact, Al Qaeda translates as "The Base") was because after the Russians were driven out of Afghanistan, all these fighters tried to return to their home countries and their home countries didn't want them back.

 

[hangover]

And Iran/Contra should been grounds for his impeachment. But he got off by claiming he was and Alzheimer victim. And he WAS a hard core ideologue.

He made a lot of people happy that he was doing something to fight the spread of communism in Central America like we did in Chile. And Reagan caused no harm by diverting funds and creating heroes like Oliver North. Do you know how much happiness is worth?

Reagan also put a big chink in Daniel Ortega's armor.

What Clinton did was just as silly of a reason to impeach him.

Trying to stop communism is like trying to change cons stupidity. It didn't work in Korea, it didn't work in Vietnam, it didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in Iraq, it didn't work in Russia, and it won't work in Iran or China. You're just wasting a lot of money and getting a lot of ignorant American kids killed by fooling them into believing they are dying for their country, when they are really dying for the profits of military contractors. If cons could only see how scummy that is.

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

And Iran/Contra should been grounds for his impeachment. But he got off by claiming he was and Alzheimer victim. And he WAS a hard core ideologue.

He made a lot of people happy that he was doing something to fight the spread of communism in Central America like we did in Chile. And Reagan caused no harm by diverting funds and creating heroes like Oliver North. Do you know how much happiness is worth?

Reagan also put a big chink in Daniel Ortega's armor.

What Clinton did was just as silly of a reason to impeach him.

Trying to stop communism is like trying to change cons stupidity. It didn't work in Korea, it didn't work in Vietnam, it didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in Iraq, it didn't work in Russia, and it won't work in Iran or China. You're just wasting a lot of money and getting a lot of ignorant American kids killed by fooling them into believing they are dying for their country, when they are really dying for the profits of military contractors. If cons could only see how scummy that is.

North Korea, Vietnam and China cannot be compared to Chile and Nicaragua which was what my comment was about.

Communism has been more or less halted, but that wasn't the case in Nicaragua with the Contras in the 80's.

Allende could have easily made Chile into a full-blown communist state, but that was prevented. Once you have huge bastions of communism in Central and South America, how much easier can it spread from there? And what a sad loss for the countries that fall prey.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Bin Laden wasn't Mujaheddin you fucking liar

Bin Laden fought in Afghanistan, and he and other Arab "volunteers" were recruited by the CIA from all over the middle east.

The reason why bin Laden was able to build a power base (Fun Fact, Al Qaeda translates as "The Base") was because after the Russians were driven out of Afghanistan, all these fighters tried to return to their home countries and their home countries didn't want them back.

bin Laden was never mujaheddin. I know you're angry Reagan best the USSR, that's never going to change

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

You are a total moron if you think for 10 years there were any remotely unqualified personnel directing air traffic.

They gradually replaced the supervisors, already experienced stand-ins and military stand-ins with fully trained ones in at most 3 years.

Air Traffic Control was pretty unsafe for years after Reagan fired the PATCO guys. The new union they let replace them came back with the SAME complaints the PATCO guys did.

So what's your solution? Should we have given them a raise after walking out and reward them for taking the nation hostage then hope they don't do it again?

 

[JoeB131]

bin Laden was never mujaheddin. I know you're angry Reagan best the USSR, that's never going to change

Uh, guy, I don't think we were checking out ID's when we were handing out stingers to kill Russians. To try to say that the CIA saw a difference between the native Afghans who were fighting and Arabs who flocked from all over the Islamic world to join the fight is kind of silly.

Point was, those Mujaheddin who Reagan helped gave shelter to Bin Laden when the Sudan threw him out and refused every attempt we made to retrieve him up to and after 9/11.

But, Gosh, Darn, they killed some Commie Bastards before they could go and teach Girls how to read, dammit. USA, USA, USA!!!!

you're a Fucking retard.

 

[JoeB131]

So what's your solution? Should we have given them a raise after walking out and reward them for taking the nation hostage then hope they don't do it again?

I would determine if their requests were sensible and fair, and then settle with them. That's what you do in a labor situation.

The Ironic thing, PATCO was one of the two unions that endorsed Reagan (the other being the mobbed up Teamsters). The rest of organized labor realized this guy was a fuckup waiting to happen to the Middle Class.

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

I would determine if their requests were sensible and fair, and then settle with them. That's what you do in a labor situation.

A president that allows workers to control and interrupt our entire air transportation shows no leadership.

 

[JoeB131]

I would determine if their requests were sensible and fair, and then settle with them. That's what you do in a labor situation.

A president that allows workers to control and interrupt our entire air transportation shows no leadership.

Yeah, it was much better to endanger people to show those working stiffs they shouldn't bring legitimate complaints up.

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

I would determine if their requests were sensible and fair, and then settle with them. That's what you do in a labor situation.

A president that allows workers to control and interrupt our entire air transportation shows no leadership.

Yeah, it was much better to endanger people to show those working stiffs they shouldn't bring legitimate complaints up.

They really could not be trusted anymore after walking out of such a critical job. People that don't work well with others are a danger just to begin with, especially in a job with communications like that.