They can't say I didn't try to retain my loyalty to the Republican Party. I stood steadfast as the George W. Bush regime entered into an illegal war thanks to the over 900 lies his administration told. I didn't throw in the towel as I watched our deficit reach an astonishing $9 trillion while thinking weren't we supposed to be the party of "fiscal responsibility."- Amazingly, I am a public school teacher who still hung firm despite George Bush's public education debacle, No Child Left Behind. For the past eight years, I have been embarrassed by a president hoping his nightmarish tenure was just an aberration on the successful track record of the political party who proudly boasts Ronald Reagan as its most beloved member.
But just as an embittered spouse faces the realization that their marriage can't be saved, I have come to the same conclusion with my political affiliation. Sadly, my thirty year commitment to the Republican Party must come to an end. Asking me to support John McCain as our party's presidential candidate after what we have endured with George W. Bush is asking too much from even a loyal, member like myself. Now they want me to accept John McCain as the best candidate our Party could come up with? I think not; it's time for me to seek greener pastures.
What's wrong with John McCain? First, he represents what's wrong with the Republican Party. They both are out of touch with the realities of the 21st century. Young people are coming out in droves to help pick a leader for this millennium and who will be a vast improvement over our current one. However could there be a political candidate more aligned with the staid, status quo, and yesterday politics than 71-year-old John McCain?
There is another reason to reject John McCain as the Republican Party's Presidential nominee. He also is out-of-touch with the pulse of American citizens of my generation, the Baby Boomers. All polls indicate that the economy is the number one concern of the American public. Yet John McCain by his own admission knows little about the economy. That's just what we need, another Republican doofus in the White House being controlled by "experts."- The majority of the public wants us out of Iraq. Not John McCain. He wants us there as long as it takes, whatever that means. People want something done about our illegal alien problem. John McCain's solution is giving amnesty to these law breakers.
Finally and most significantly, John McCain is the Republican version of John Kerry. How do they expect him to defeat any Democratic candidate in the general election when he has alienated so many members of his own party? He can't and won't win, yet he's the go-to-guy for the Grand Old Party?
Even though the idea of the Bush-Clinton dynasty continuing makes my stomach turn, maybe Hillary Clinton is right. Maybe the country does need another Clinton to mop up the mess from another Bush. It's unbelievable for me to think, but if it comes down to her and John McCain, I would rather have Hillary in charge. At least this time we will have a smart president in office.
I must cut my ties with the Republican Party that has let me down once too often. However, there will be happy days for me again as I have found my political party match made in heaven. It is an organization that believes like I do that "government at all levels is too large, too expensive, woefully inefficient, arrogant, intrusive, and downright dangerous."- They also understand the "Democratic and Republican politicians have created the status quo and do not intend to change it."- These are the views of the Libertarian Party, the political party most aligned with the forgotten principals our country was built on. We need a new American Revolution where citizens follow my lead and abandon the political parties that have destroyed a country our founding fathers would not recognize. It's time we get back to our roots of liberty, enterprise, and personal responsibilities that they fought so hard to achieve.
#######
http://www.debracraig.com
Debra Craig is writer whose articles have been published nationwide. She is also the author of two books, the most recent one called, "Welcome to My Nightmare, I mean, Classroom: A Teacher in the Trenches Shatters the Myths, Lies, and Half-truths about Public Education." (A.T. Publishing, NY, 9/07)
The book shares with readers her reality of working at an underperforming high school and how the problems in education aren't what they appear to be. She knows because she has been a public school teacher in Moreno Valley, CA, for over a decade.
Debra is now on a mission not just to write about the problems with our public schools, but wants to be an instrument of change in improving them.She's tired of the government's lip service that they care about kids' education when in reality nothing is farther from the truth. This former kindergarten and fifth grade teacher plans on doing whatever it will take to effect change in a system that is so very broken.
It isn't about being "conservative" enough. It isn't about being "considered too liberal." Our two-party system doesn't work because they aren't American enough and following the guideposts our founding fathers wanted us to follow. Ron Paul has the right message, I feel he was just the wrong one to deliver it because the media perceived him as a nut-job, and that is sad, because it wasn't true. I can't believe we are facing the possible of the Bush-Clinton reign continuing for another eight years?
How can this happen?
by
Debra Craig (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 8 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 9:20:28 AM
Because mid-westerners were so busy thumping their Bibles and listening to anti-gay and anti-abortion crap that has no effect on them whatsoever, they voted against their own best interests and voted for Bush not once, but twice.
Because voting machines were rigged by Diebold, an unashamed maker of voting machines and Bush supporter who said he'd do anything to make sure Bush became president and remained in office a second time.
Because right wing radio brain washed the masses by repeating the 900 or so Bush lies until they became the preceived truth that those of us with brains and reasoning power knew were lies. Now the leaders of the lemmings are screwed, because the other lemmings don't see through McCain and are supporting him.
Because the Republicans have no one to offer up as an alternative to McCain. They're all hiding in a closet, under indictment, in jail or fleeing Congress to take lucrative jobs as lobbyists, therefore cheating on the rules they set for themselves by mandating a two-year wait between the end of a Congressional term and a lobbying job.
Because Gore went about the Florida recount in the wrong way by not demanding the entire state be counted, and the Supremes stepped in where they should have feared to tread.
Because chicken, weak sister John Kerry didn't demand a recount in Ohio.
Because Bill Clinton didn't marry a plastic, insipid, smile-pasted-on-face woman of no substance who raised two vapid, self-centered, wild, untrollable daughters, and couldn't teach her husband how to pronounce words let alone speak English correctly, but a woman of strength and opinion, right or wrong, who has always had political ambitions of her own.
Because the Clinton's have name recognition and a powerful political machine.
Those reasons are just for starters.
Now that it looks like the Republicans have committed political suicide, they have no one to blame but themselves.
For the record, I am not a Hillary supporter, nor am I a fan of Bill's any longer.
He's the schmuck who brought us NAFTA, CAFTA, GAT and all the rest of "F"*&%ingTAs. But if she's the ultimate choice, I will vote for her with free hand strongly gripping my nose.
It's still better than wasting my vote on a third party candidate who has no chance of winning, or a Republican who will bring us more of the same.
by
Sandy Sand (131 articles, 0 quicklinks, 166 diaries, 1230 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 10:25:00 AM
Voting for the Lesser of 2 Evils Is Still Voting for Evil
You know the game is rigged; you know that the Clintons are as neoliberal as the Bushies.... so why bother voting at all?
Voting in a rigged system is voting for it.
There are other, more proactive, ways of pursuing democracy. My first suggestion is for citizens to run parallel elections (also now known as citizen run exit polls) outside polling sites and determine for yourself how your neighbors voted.
Another suggestion is to work toward building a political party that isn't beholden to (e.g. sponsored by) corporations.
We don't score points in heaven for voting - U.S. elections have become meaningless because of the total lack of basis for confidence in reported results.
Like they say in Alcoholics Anonymous - the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same actions while expecting different results.
Withdraw your vote, your consent, and your participation in a system that has no intention but to continue pursuing profits to the exclusion of all other considerations.
Try something different, and maybe we'll get different results.
by
Rady Ananda (89 articles, 233 quicklinks, 18 diaries, 646 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 11:33:04 AM
What "different" thing would you recommend? Not voting at all?
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men [and women] to do nothing.
Voting for the lessor of two evils might still be voting for evil, however, it is hard to imagine that had Al Gore or John Kerry been elected that as much destruction to our country, the constitution our economy and our international reputation would have transpired.
by
August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 428 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 1:18:33 PM
It does not even always mean that either of the 2 is actually evil, just that neither is your first choice.
In the 2000 election, I voted for the lesser of 2 evils. I liked Kucinich best, and by the time the debates were over I didn't really care for either Gore or Bush, but there was no doubt anywhere in my mind that Gore was the lesser of the 2 evils.
Did that make Gore evil? Not by any stretch of the imagination. In retrospect I have little doubt that Gore would have been a great President. It's just an expression - don't take it too literally.
by
PrMaine (8 articles, 5 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 278 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 2:31:26 PM
I agree that the republican party allowed itself to get hijacked by those who fixated on a few single issues, but I have to say, the democratic party, of which I was a member, allowed itself to get hijacked by those same few single issues. I support gay rights, I am pro-choice, but those two issues do not deserve prominence above all else. I spoke with someone from NOW last year, and she just couldn't grasp the fact that large numbers of American women who were democrats were not willing to abandon the wider issues and cast their votes and support solely on choice or gender. I've watched the gay rights movement infer that gay marriage was more impportant than millions of working poor and struggling middle class American citzens ability to work, support their families, than homelessness, hunger and privation.
Whether we're talking about either extreme, they both have degenerated into selfish, elitist, jaded, Caligulaesque movements, and neither of them serve the citizen's interests.
I refuse to care about abortion or gay rights any longer. I'm a woman, but I'm also a wife, a mother and a worker. I'm a human being first. You want to talk about those single issue rights, then also learn to care about the wider issues facing the American people, because they have civil and human rights considerations as well. I refuse to sacrifice the majority of the people for what are essentially frivolous matters by comparison.
by
J Perry (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 13 comments)
on Saturday, February 9, 2008 at 1:01:59 PM
Despite the fact that I didn't like Romney as a candidate, he just handed the nomination to McCain--HUGE mistake. Huckabee is somewhat better, but Ron Paul was really the only viable republican candidate, in that all the others kiss the boots of the establishment--the SOURCE of our perennial problems in America.
Republicans are causing the Republican party to disintegrate. But that might be good in the long run, because then a real Republican party can rise from its ashes.,
by
Frank Staheli (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 27 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 11:01:17 AM
I, for one, am sick of the historic revisionism that makes Ronald Reagan a "great president". All of the historic evidence indicates that the good things that happened during his presidency would have happened anyway (the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example) and that the bad things happened because he was just as bad a manager and just as criminal as George W. Bush and his father. Remember Iran-Contra? Remember Bush Sr. pardonning John Negroponte and Poindexter?
I begin to think that many people who are Republicans, ARE Republicans, because their short term memory abysmally sucks.
by
brantl (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 11:10:32 AM
After he was shot, something changed in Reagan... He left the day-to-day governance to too many Washington insiders- the nascent Neo-COns of today. Instead of making government smaller and more efficient, it got bigger- MUCH bigger. While taxes were cut for some, the middle class- the driving force behind the economy- saw little or none of that, as those same Washington isiders made sure that any tax cuts were steered toward the well-connected corporations, who also got bloated no-bid government contracts. The Military-Industrial complex got fatter and richer, as the average shmoe got raped, pillaged and sheared like a sheep.
This has continued on through Bush 1, Clinton (don't believe for a second he wasn't OWNED by lobbyists!) and Bush 2. ESPECIALLY Bush 2! Time has come for radical change. People don't revolt with their heads or hearts, they revolt with their stomachs. Now, even the Upper Middle Class, and the 'rich' (whatever that is- we're ALL slaves!) are getting very hungry, as we witness the wealthy take food out of the mouths of our children to feed their insatiable greed and lust for power.
From Reagan on down, the neo-cons have given conservatism a bad name. They are no more conservative than Mao was a champion of democracy! And the so-called liberals are no better. It's a choice of either National Socialism on the Left, or National Fascism on the right. You say toe-may-toe, and I say Toh-mah-toh- either way, we're all tomatoes being stomped into totalitarian ketchup by our overlords! We now live in a high-tech serfdom, and the world is rapidly reverting to a one-world feudalist government. They tie us to the land and our jobs with taxes and threats of unemployment, and use taxes, health care, the media and pharmaceuticals to control us, beat us down and milk us dry.
Anyone who stands up to this debased system, like Ron Paul, is portrayed as a 'kook' and a 'fringe character', and is personally attacked, in order for the message to be lost in all the heat and fury that signifies nothing. Too bad people are leaving the party, because the Ron Paul rEVOLution is all about taking back the party. Wait til' 2012, and you won't recognize the Ron Paul-ized Republican party!
xtrabiggg
++++++++++++++++++++
by
xtrabiggg (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 30 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 5:53:25 PM
I'm not well versed in Libertarian ideology and I don't purport to be.
My understanding is that Libertarians reject the idea of any laws or policies that seek to "level the playing field." My understanding is that we should all be free to "get all we can" and let the chips fall where they may. Is this correct?
If so, Libertarians, like Republicans and Democrats and all other supporters of capitalism, especially "free market" capitalism, fail to acknowledge that highly centralized wealth destroys democracy. As the "winners" in capitalism's predatory struggle gain more and more wealth at the expense of the "losers", they are able to devour more and more resources and they are able to control more and more of the people's government.
Put more succinctly, capitalism and democracy cannot co-exist. If you rejected Republicans because their philosophy strangles democracy, remarrying into Libertarianism will bring you only more of the same. Even the name is absurd. What liberty remains to the common man and woman when corporatists have the power and the freedom to do whatever they choose?
One of the Green Party's "Ten Values" states:
DECENTRALIZATION Centralization of wealth and power contributes to social and economic injustice, environmental destruction, and militarization. Therefore, we support a restructuring of social, political and economic institutions away from a system which is controlled by and mostly benefits the powerful few, to a democratic, less bureaucratic system.
Do Libertarians acknowledge the problems caused by the "centralization of wealth and power?" If not, you might just want to get that new marriage annulled.
by
welshTerrier2 (7 articles, 3 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 105 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 12:03:10 PM
How do you decentralize wealth and power - when those that control the wealth and power have centralized it, used it to dominate our political discourse and the messages conveyed through the mass media?
All for decentralizing wealth and power - but how do we get there?
by
August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 428 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 1:21:47 PM
The first step in the process has to be to acknowledge that we have a problem with our "democracy." Not all accept this premise. It is incumbent on all who do to convince "the others" of the national condition. I think more and more Americans are starting to see the problem but they still think they can solve it by "giving the other party a chance." The image of a ping-pong ball being smashed back and forth comes to mind.
If we could somehow achieve critical mass, i.e. a state where a strong majority of citizens demanded change, then, at a minimum, the battle would be joined. The outcome, however, would not be at all certain.
Two basic possibilities exist:
1. we would demand that the political parties responded to our majority or we would vote them out of office (presumably either supporting a new third party or seizing control of one of the major parties) or
2. the corporate state would drop the pretense of democracy they currently advertise and we would have explicit repression of the masses. The key to this situation would be how the military, and certain privatized military groups(e.g. Blackwater), reacted. If they side with the wealthy and powerful, we're toast. At that point, the only path for change would be violent revolution.
One of your posts above gave me the impression you supported the PDA model of "working within the Democratic Party." I'm all for working for change but I see no possibility anytime soon that the Democratic Party will become a party of the people. The alternative I've chosen, which I see as a totally lame alternative, is to vote for a third party candidate. The objective is NOT to win an election but rather to build a political coalition, i.e. a block of votes, to gain greater political clout.
Tucked inside the Democratic Party, progressives have absolutely no voice. Blocking Kucinich from the debates should tell you all you need to know about that. PDA board members have lined up to swear their allegiance to either Hillary or Obama. That's just pathetic. Neither of them will bring the changes we need. They don't even talk about our positions on the issues.
The three most critical issues are global warming, dependence on oil and military spending. The only possible solution to any of these serious problems is to gut the military budget and spend money on alternative energy research. The Democrats have offered little more than tokenism to solve these problems. The corporations funding them have no interest in reducing oil imports or reducing military spending. You think voting for Democrats is better than "doing nothing?" I think voting for Democrats is endorsing the status quo. Why would they change if they know they can win elections?
It's time to tell the Democratic Party that, if they cut progressives out of the process, and they have, they cannot have our votes. When it costs them enough votes, maybe then they'll be room for some honest exchanges. Right now, they don't give a damn about you.
by
welshTerrier2 (7 articles, 3 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 105 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 2:30:35 PM
"Do Libertarians acknowledge the problems caused by the "centralization of wealth and power?" If not, you might just want to get that new marriage annulled. "
Of course we do, if you'd read any Austrian economics you'd know that. The centralization is caused by the gov's interventions in the economy, in other words as power grows & centralizes so does wealth. Does this mean all will have equal wealth in a free economy? Definitely not, people have different levels of skill & ambition. The good news is that all will be better off.
The opposite happens when the gov intervenes in the economy. The elites get richer & the economy stagnates, leaving the majority poorer.
Ah, but you say the special interests will control the gov if they're allowed to make unlimited amopunts of money, right? The problem stems from the growth of the gov's power. (In my perfect world there is no coercive gov, society's institutions are voluntary. But this gets in too deep.) That's why the concept of limited government is so important.
A note on corporations, they aren't free market institutions, but a creation & extension of the state. As Mussolini said:
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
Which goes hand in hand with Jefferson's ideas:
"I do verily believe that..a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth."
--Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800.
A great read that clearly makes the distinction between Capitalism & the mixed economy below:
The Vampire Economy: Italy, Germany, and the US By Jeffrey M. HerbenerPosted on 10/13/2005
What is the link between fascism and socialism? They are stages on a continuum of economic control, one that begins in intervention in the free market, moves toward regimentation and greater rigidity, marches toward socialism as failures increase, and ends in dictatorship.
The fascist system, wrote Mises, "clung first to the same principles of economic policies which all not outright socialist governments have adopted in our day, interventionism. Then later it turned step by step toward the German system of socialism, i.e., all-round state control of economic activities."[1]
What distinguished the fascist variety of interventionism was its reliance on the idea of stability to justify extending state power. Big business and labor eagerly allied with the state to obtain stability against what Murray Rothbard called business fluctuations, the ups and downs of particular markets that result from shifting consumer demands. They naïvely thought that state power could supplant consumer sovereignty with their own producer sovereignty over their industries while maintaining the greater productivity of the division of labor.
At first, the fascists used state spending, mainly for war, to eliminate business fluctuations. Only after they became dependent on the state did the leaders of big business and labor realize that they had merely traded consumer sovereignty for state sovereignty. Soon after they learned which one was the more exacting taskmaster.
To extend their control, the fascists bolstered fiscal expenditures with debt and monetary inflation. Not only did they hope thereby to dominate more and more industries with their expenditures, but also to boost public support for their regimes by generating economic prosperity. Instead, their reckless spending and inflating set in motion the boom-bust cycle. They took the depression as an opportunity to extend their power further by socializing investment with regulations while claiming that such measures would stabilize the business cycle.
The fascists found a readymade theoretical justification for stabilization policies in the work of John Maynard Keynes.[2] Keynes claimed that the instability of capitalism emanated from the free play the system gave to the "animal spirits" of investors. Driven by bouts of over-optimism and over-pessimism, investors alternate between bullish spending and bearish hoarding sending the economy into fits of boom and bust.
Keynes proposed to eliminate this instability with state control over both sides of the capital markets. A central bank with the power to inflate the money supply through credit expansion would determine the supply of capital funding and fiscal and regulatory policy would socialize the investment of capital.
In an open letter to President Roosevelt published in the New York Times on December 31, 1933, Keynes counseled this plan:
In a field of domestic policy, I put in the forefront, a large volume of loan expenditure under government auspices. I put in the second place the maintenance of cheap and abundant credit. . . . With these . . . I should expect a successful outcome with great confidence. How much that would mean, not only to the material prosperity of the United States and the whole world, but in comfort to men's minds through a restoration of their faith in the wisdom and the power of government.[3]
Keynes was even more enthusiastic for the spread of his faith in Germany. In the preface to the German edition of the General Theory, published in 1936, Keynes wrote:
The theory of aggregate production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire.[4]
State control of money, credit, banking, and investment became the blueprint for fascist stabilization policy. Thus, the expansion of state control under fascism followed a predictable pattern. Debt and monetary inflation paid for state spending. The resulting expansion of credit led to the boom-bust cycle. The financial collapse of the bust resulted in stricter regulation of banking and socialization of investment, which permitted more monetary inflation, credit expansion, debt and spending. The consequent decline in the purchasing power of money justified price and wage controls, which became the focal point of all-around state control. In some cases more slowly and in other cases more rapidly, fascism followed this path toward central planning.
The Republican Party is NOT Republican Anymore, but ...
The Libertarian Party is!
If you are interested in restoring our free republic with the Constitution intact, then consider the Libertarian Party! See LP.org.
Ron Paul is the only Republican contender that was ever true to its principles. Now they are on the verge of nominating John Mc Cain who is closer to the Democrats.
We need to continue to support Ron Paul. If the GOP does not nominate him (and right now it looks impossible) then he might decide to accept a third party nomination. I hope that would be the Libertarian Party with an endorsement from the Constitution Party.
by
Alice Lillie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 45 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 2:19:37 PM
Thank you for refreshing my memory about Reagan. I was in denial about many of the things you wrote because let's face it, do I want to really face up to the fact I've been loyal to a party that has actually increased the government so dramatically. At least Bill Clinton did it while being fiscally responsible.
I did like how Reagan stood up to the air traffic controller's union. You know there is a person alive today who would have had the guts to do that.
by
Debra Craig (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 8 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 7:43:40 PM
Get a grip on reality, Reagan was an absolute disaster!
Ronald Reagan, a great president? You decide where how high that bar is.
Kick-started his 1980 campaign in Nashtoba County, Mississippi with the coded call on behalf of “states rights.” Oh, Nashtoba? That’s the country where Philadelphia, MS is. You do remember Philadelphia, MS don’t you? Try Mississippi Burning, in 1964.
Prior to 1980, RR strongly opposed the Voting Rightsand the Equal Rights Acts. What a bonhomie fellow, that Ronnie was, eh?
More members of his administration were investigated, indicted, tried and convicted on felonies than in the administrations of any other president, before or since; more than 300.
His deregulation mantra was a direct contributor to the Michael Milken/Ivan Boesky junk bond fiasco and the Michael Keeting/Neil Bush/Jeb Bush/John McCain S&L meltdown that US taxpayers bailed out to the tune of tens of billions during the Reagan administration!
The two deepest and longest and most destructive recessions since The Great Depression occurred on his watch; 1983 and 1987; 10.2% unemployment rate in 1983, 11.3% in 1987.
In 1987, President Reagan presided over the most severe stock market crash since 1929!
Prior to Bush II, the largest government deficits in US history — including during WWII — occurred through almost the entirety of the Reagan years, and saw the national debt double.
Although he signed the bill, Mr. Reagan bitterly opposed designating any day as a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and had Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela designated a terrorist, and Mandela’s African National Congress as a “terrorist organization.” Prior to and through the crumbling of the apartheid system in South Africa, Reagan supported that odious regime by vetoeing sanctions against it.
Reagan supported the brutal dictatorships of Pinochet in Chile and Suharto in Indonesia.
In 1983, Reagan responded to the murder of 241 Marines in Lebanon by cutting and running, only to later invade Club Med in Grenada.
Through the entire 8 years of his administration, Reagan supplied Osama bin Laden with military equipment and intelligence.
Ronald Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad three times, to shake the hand of Saddam Hussein and to supply the dictator with the seed chemicals for the WMD the Iraqi president would use on his own Kurdish population in 1987. The entirety of the Reagan administration stood stone silent over the travesty! Exactly as he did when terrorists blew up the Pan-Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland!
During the Reagan administration, the United States became the world’s largest and most prolific trafficker in illegal arms and drugs (Iran Contra).
And Debra, I haven’t even gotten started. I’d hope a school teacher would have a better grip on history than the miserable level of ignorance you manifest. But then, that has been the Republican way.
— Ed Tubbs
by
Ed Tubbs (126 articles, 1 quicklinks, 21 diaries, 45 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 8:01:33 PM
Get a grip on reality, Reagan was an absolute disaster!
Ronald Reagan, a great president? You decide how high that bar is.
Kick-started his 1980 campaign in Nashtoba County, Mississippi with the coded call on behalf of “states rights.” Oh, Nashtoba? That’s the country where Philadelphia, MS is. You do remember Philadelphia, MS don’t you? Try Mississippi Burning, in 1964.
Prior to 1980, RR strongly opposed the Voting Rightsand the Equal Rights Acts. What a bonhomie fellow, that Ronnie was, eh?
More members of his administration were investigated, indicted, tried and convicted on felonies than in the administrations of any other president, before or since; 138 total.
His deregulation mantra was a direct contributor to the Michael Milken/Ivan Boesky junk bond fiasco and the Michael Keeting/Neil Bush/Jeb Bush S&L meltdown that US taxpayers bailed out to the tune of tens of billions during the Reagan administration!
The two deepest and longest and most destructive recessions since The Great Depression occurred on his watch; 1983 and 1987; 10.2% unemployment rate in 1983, 11.3% in 1987.
In 1987, President Reagan presided over the most severe stock market crash since 1929!
Prior to Bush II, the largest government deficits in US history — including during WWII — occurred through almost the entirety of the Reagan years, and saw the national debt double.
Although he signed the bill, Mr. Reagan bitterly opposed designating any day as a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and had Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela designated a terrorist, and Mandela’s African National Congress as a “terrorist organization.” Prior to and through the crumbling of the apartheid system in South Africa, Reagan supported that odious regime by vetoeing sanctions against it.
Reagan supported the brutal dictatorships of Pinochet in Chile and Suharto in Indonesia.
In 1983, Reagan responded to the murder of 241 Marines in Lebanon by cutting and running, only to later invade Club Med in Grenada.
Through the entire 8 years of his administration, Reagan supplied Osama bin Laden with military equipment and intelligence.
Ronald Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad three times, to shake the hand of Saddam Hussein and to supply the dictator with the seed chemicals for the WMD the Iraqi president would use on his own Kurdish population in 1987. The entirety of the Reagan administration stood stone silent over the travesty! Exactly as he did when terrorists blew up the Pan-Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland!
During the Reagan administration, the United States became the world’s largest and most prolific trafficker in illegal arms and drugs (Iran Contra).
And Debra, I haven’t even gotten started.
— Ed Tubbs
by
Ed Tubbs (126 articles, 1 quicklinks, 21 diaries, 45 comments)
on Friday, February 8, 2008 at 8:04:21 PM
That it is a gangster group running american ,has been since jfk died.
both sides of the coin are run by gangsters ,they silenced Mike gravel and Denis Kucinich in the same way they did Ron Paul.
the only power left to Americans is to stop spending untill the country is bankrupted ,this will make them angry because all their friends (Elites ) will be losing money.
America is being consumed by monsters today,ungodly and are ready to hand it all to the UN ,to a global Govt.
I understand your pain 20,000 Americans leave America each year they have given up.most of the 20,000 are people with bussiness savy , for each one of these that leave they need to invite 500 illegals into the country to offset the taxes they lose.Even a third party has little chance the voting is rigged,Where in a democracy does court appointed presidents fit in.
by
dave stanley (5 articles, 1 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 286 comments)
on Saturday, February 9, 2008 at 2:53:52 AM
What is the link between fascism and socialism? They are stages on a continuum of economic control, one that begins in intervention in the free market, moves toward regimentation and greater rigidity, marches toward socialism as failures increase, and ends in dictatorship.