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You mean like the Democrats Far Left's deification of all that is Kennedy? Including drunk driving killer brothers?
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Y'know it's one thing to have heroes but at least it wasn't the hero tooting his own horn.
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I was waiting for the "Well, they do it, too!" kneejerk. Teddy wasn't a President and I do believe he should have gotten jail time for what he did, but, he didn't, much like the big/old-monied members of the GOP Far Right when they commit their, ahem, "little" pecadilloes. Money and influence buys the way out of everything no what the political leaning and it is wrong...
And, speaking of brothers, wasn't there a Joseph somewhere in the mix who was KIA in WWII while Reagan was making "Buy Bond" pitches?...
JFK served honorably in the military, performed above the call in saving the lives of his shipmates, was not a raving leftist (probably the most right of center Democratic leader in the 20th century) and when he was brutally murdered in 1963, the U.S. was at the height of its powers, even with the albatross of Vietnam around its neck...
Regan came in after the U.S. bottomed out after the debacle of Nixon/Ford/Carter; the only way he could fail is if he did something bone-headed like Nixon's Wage/Price frezee. He was much in the same position as whoever wins the election this year: the economy is recovering, barring, as I said, any bone-head moves, and that person will gain the political capital for his party in 2016. In addition to great timing, the Reagan "Economic Miracle" was partially achieved, in the early years, by some rather tricky accounting gimmicks. A former boss of mine, who was the CFO for a public utility here in California pointed it out to me when I was jokingly referring to some reclassifications made in financial reports by our outside accountants/auditors. He told me the prctice was wide spread in business and even in goverment and showed me some articles, hidden in the back pages of the WSJ reporting the Reagan administration had reclassified formerly exempt occupations and mnufacturing areas back into the labor/manufacturing stats. Some occupations were exempted from labor stats because they were deemed not to have an effect or were not affecting generally reported labor stats; these include civil service, military, and other such categories. The same applied to manufactuing; military purchases, governmental manufacturing and other such categories were ommited in manufaturing calculations. Say you have a base of 100 million workers and you have 10 million unemployed; you have 10% unemployment. Say you also have 20 million workers not counted in the the base 100 million number. You add the 20 million to make the base 120 million, you still have the 10 million unemployed, but the percentage now goes down. You didn't create any jobs; you just changed the way they are counted and calculated and you look good, and as Fernando would say "it is better to look good than to feel good". The Regan administration applied the same tactic to the manufaturing side by also broadening the base by adding formerly exempt items and using the new bae to recalculate; manufacturing really didn't increase it just looked that way. Smoke and mirrors, bread and circuses. Later, he would then spend the U.S. into another recession, but when the facade came down, well, he was out of office and the godhead worship had begun...
Brought down the USSR? Well, gee, Iguess the efforts of the Polish Solidarity movement, the support of other outside groups of dissidents, both monetarily and morally like the Catholic Church, the border guards who turned a blind eye to citizens passing through border to the West, and the changing of the Old Guard leadership in the USSR had nothing to do with it; Ol' regan did it all single handedly and probably in his off hours...
From the Dept. of State website:
http://future.state.gov/when/timelin...communism.html
Don't seem to see a lot of mention of Regan there...
Oh, and the "Tear down this wall" speech? Well, Mr. Reagan, I was one of the millions of Americans who watched JFK standing in fornt of the Berlin Wall at the height of the Cold War, a far mor vulnerable target than you were and proclaim the support of the U.S. for those on the wrong side of the Wall. I saw JFK, I heard JFK, and you, Mr. Regan, were no JFK...
Let the kneejerking begin...
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