posted on June 5, 2004 03:05:47 PM new
I know this isn't ebay related but it is only right to say goodbye to the man who was one of the most influential people in the 20th century.
President Ronald Reagan passed away this afternoon in his home in California.
posted on June 5, 2004 03:42:37 PM new
Wow! I was on imdb.com just before coming to this site and saw something about President Reagen and thought that I saw him as listed as dying in 2004. I watch the news closely and never heard of that.
Then I come to this site and see this. I then go back to IMDB and see the they have him as passing away on June 5th, 2004.
posted on June 5, 2004 07:50:09 PM new
Well, I probably have known R/R as a Sports Announcer long before most ever heard of him.
He was the sports announcer for WHO DesMoines, IA when I was 10-12 yrs. old. I used to listen to him do play by play of the Chi Cubs sitting in the studio in Des Moines. He took the game off a teletype & used in studio sound effects . Some times he would get ahead of the teletype & announce a homer or double etc. only to have retract it & say oh it was caught at the fence. This was 1937/38.
posted on June 5, 2004 08:12:04 PM new
Many millions live in freedom and peace today because of him. There's not a statesman on earth today who can fill his shoes. Farewell Gipper. May God be with you forever.
A $75.00 solid state device will always blow first to protect a 25 cent fuse ~ Murphy's Law
posted on June 5, 2004 08:35:39 PM new
LOL Sanmar - when they air West Wing on Bravo during commercial breaks they air little bits of trivia about past presidents. One of the stories they tell about Reagan is from back when he was doing those games and lost the connection on the teletype. HHe had to make upplay by play completely blind until it was recovered a few minutes later. They did not mention and I have always wondered just how accurate his fantasy play by play report was.
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
If it's really "common" sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on June 6, 2004 05:10:40 PM new
When RR was governor of California a compadre of mine managed to rear end his limousine AND push it around a corner. This was kept out of the news, but my high school chum lost his privilege to drive for seven years. RR's attitude was 'that's life', but the California State Police were livid. Let me add that losing his license seemed to wake him up to reality and he is a successful business owner, now.
posted on June 6, 2004 05:35:05 PM new
Just read a piece on him in todays newspaper. Said he was 41 and an unemployed actor (with wyman @ 28 & pregnant) when he decided to get into politics. Pretty amazing he switched careers successfully and to reach the pinnacle, becoming president. (Wonder if he *knew he belonged there?)
posted on June 6, 2004 05:39:46 PM new
I am backa again. In my 76 yrs. There has never been a president as Charismatic as President Reagon. JFK was a very close second & if he had lived for a second term, it could have been different. Of course being a staunch Republican, I am biased
posted on June 6, 2004 06:08:39 PM new
"(Wonder if he *knew he belonged there?)"
yes, Neroter, i think he did. he accepted his governorship as a mandate from the people over pat brown. one will read that his assertivness in telling his own state department, that he would tell Gorbachev just what he, indeed, told him. he didnt just call a "spade a spade," he called it a //////// shovel sometimes..that is, he once said, "that is why i am President," to someone who questioned him.
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President Reagan[whooops-almost misspelllled his name too], was the man who stopped the cold war and opened eastern europe to democracy.
remember this was the second time we made the evil empire blink.
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Having said that, i agree both were[are] both great presidents; and we will reap rewards from their leadership for generations.
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myhumbleopinionofcourse, myoldtoy
posted on June 6, 2004 06:36:23 PM new
myoldtoy: People always cite him as one of the great presidents. Maybe because I was young at the time and didnt pay much attention, but I never really felt this way about him. I was probably one of the few who mistrusted him mostly because of his acting skills. (When was he acting and when was he showing his real motives/goals?)
posted on June 6, 2004 06:37:03 PM new
as a staunch democrat, i will keep my opinions to myself. however, if someone is that bad as an actor, how could we expect more as a politician?
posted on June 6, 2004 06:45:27 PM new
HI again Neroter: i meant nothing to demean your opinion; in fact i have always respected people who succinctly lay out their views. i certainly didnt mean to give a history lesson. and certainly not a movie critic. i guess i liked him on death valley days; but hell i was easy..we had just gotten a television..and agreed, poignant is well said about Ms. Davis's piece.
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and rarriffle; in keeping your opinion silent; you speak bunches...thanks.
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myoldtoy
[ edited by myoldtoy on Jun 6, 2004 06:46 PM ]
posted on June 6, 2004 06:47:44 PM new
rariffle, he was actually a very good 'b' class actor. He spoke well thats for sure.
haha lucy...good going! I think I have an old Regan political button, should check on that...but gosh-golly capitalizing on the mans death already!!...but wait, thats a novel ebay idea isnt it??! lol
posted on June 6, 2004 06:50:02 PM new
old toy: no problem, i didnt take anything negative from your posts. found it informative. I guess I'd like to know more about the man than the president and davis' article was insightful to that.
posted on June 6, 2004 08:03:59 PM new
Good memories. Good thoughts. Our children can grow up without the shadow of complete annihilation, Thanks to RR.
One of the previous posters just got put on permanent ignore.
[ edited by parklane64 on Jun 6, 2004 08:18 PM ]
posted on June 6, 2004 09:01:45 PM new
parklane, who are you addressing? If its me, I do remember some things coined because of him. Regan-nomics, trickle down.
I remember jobs were hopping on wall street...employement agencies springing up all over the place doing bou-kuu business with brokerage firms. But then came the bust...and I vaguely remember it being blamed on the regan'nomic boom. Then there was the whole iran contra thing. But as I said, I was young and not really concerned with the world at large. Never seeing any of it as having any immediate impact on my life.
So I was asking what was it that leads people to claim he was one of the greatest presidents of all time?
At least rariffle is not saying what she/he really thinks in lieu of respect for the dead man who was not a saint as you so eloquenty (as usual point out. How do you intrepret that into something disrespectful?
Many say what we do in public or career is who we are. But I dont thats entirely true. I think even his family didnt know too well who he really was, and for that I am saddened at his death for their loss. I'd bet that although they will grieve their memories for him, they are strangely relieved right now too. Just because of his long drawn-out illiness.
I wonder if its me on ignore? boy, I thought I was sensitive! You take the cake!
posted on June 6, 2004 09:22:39 PM new
" Mr. Gorbachev...tear this wall down" The Wall came down, millions of people in Europe experienced freedom for the first time in their lives, the nuclear standown followed, and every civilized person on the face of the earth finally was able to breathe a sigh of relief. It has nothing to do with Democrats, Republicans, Communists or other political persuations. It has to do with restoring sanity and preserving the earth for a couple more generations. Not a bad job for someone who did what no one else could do. He deserves an A+ on his final report card.
A $75.00 solid state device will always blow first to protect a 25 cent fuse ~ Murphy's Law
posted on June 7, 2004 07:29:41 AM newI just encountered this tribute to Ronald Reagan on a GI's web site, and I thought it so touching:
quote:
"Ronald Reagan
We will always remember.
We will always be proud.
We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.
--President Ronald Reagan
Normandy, France
Ronald Reagan did not fight in either theater of World War II, but he certainly used his talents on the home front selling war bonds and supporting the troops.
The main reason I included this tribute is because he believed in what the World War II GIs were fighting and dying for. He believed in Freedom. He is cognizant that without Freedom, nothing else is important, and that Freedom is worth all it takes to obtain and preserve it.
He fought a different war, in a later time, against another enemy. He didn't storm Nazi guns with a Garand in his hands. He faced the liberal Democrats in Washington, and the Evil Empire in the Soviet Union…and he won the Cold War.
This is my way of saying thanks to him, and I hope others will remember."
Ronald Wilson Reagan, is gone, but he will never be forgotten!
posted on June 7, 2004 10:10:32 AM new
Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004
Goodbye and Good Riddance
By PHIL GASPER
Ronald Reagan has finally died at age 93. Predictably, politicians from both major parties have issued gushing tributes to this venal and vicious man, who was happy to slash workers' wages, see families thrown onto the street, support sadistic death squads and bomb other countries, if this was in the interests of the American ruling class.
Meanwhile, if recent history is any guide, the mainstream media will steer well clear of providing an accurate portrayal of Reagan, the man and the president. Last year, in a stunning act of cowardice, CBS canceled its much-publicized "docudrama" about Ron and Nancy, The Reagans, caving in to a campaign by the Republican National Committee, right-wing radio hosts, Fox News and conservative Internet sites. The movie was instead shown later to a much smaller audience on the Showtime cable network.
Conservatives attacked the film for portraying Reagan as homophobic, and Nancy as a domineering wife and mother who pulled the strings behind the scenes while abusing her children. They were apparently even more incensed that James Brolin, husband of liberal icon Barbra Streisand, played the part of Reagan.
While The Reagans was undoubtedly a monumental example of third-rate TV schlock, examples cited by conservatives of substantial inaccuracies didn't hold up. One complaint was that the movie showed Reagan ignoring the AIDS crisis because of its association with gay sex, and telling his wife, "They that live in sin shall die in sin."
But in real life, Reagan refused to mention AIDS publicly for six years, under-funded federal programs dealing with the disease and, according to his authorized biography, said, "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague," because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."
C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, later revealed, "because transmission of AIDS was understood primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs, the advisors to the president took the stand, they are only getting what they justly deserve."
In the movie, Nancy slaps her 5-year-old daughter, Patti. In real life, Patti wrote, "I first remember my mother hitting me when I was eight. It escalated as I got older and became a weekly, sometimes daily, event."
In the movie, Nancy insists, "Ketchup is a vegetable! It is not a meat, right? So it is a vegetable." In real life, Reagan directed the Department of Agriculture to classify ketchup as a vegetable in September 1981 in an attempt to slash $1.5 billion from the federal school lunch program.
Conservatives also criticized the movie for what it did not include. "Does it show he had the longest and strongest recovery in postwar history?" asked Reagan's White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater.
But Reagan's economic policies were a disaster for working-class Americans. Reagan presided over the worst recession since the 1930s, and economic growth in the 1980s was lower than in the 1970s, despite the stimulus of military Keynesian policies, which created massive federal budget deficits and tripled the federal debt. By the end of the decade, real wages were down and the poverty rate had increased by 20 percent.
The real problem with The Reagans was not that it was too critical of the Reagan presidency, but that it was largely uncritical. According to The New York Times, the movie "paints [Reagan] as an exceptionally gifted politician and a moral man who stuck to his beliefs, often against his advisers' urgings."
Reagan was many things, but "gifted" was not one of them. "Poor dear," remarked British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his closest international ally, "there's nothing between his ears." As for a "moral man," Reagan's morality included union busting--beginning with his dismissal of striking air traffic controllers in 1981--an unprecedented war on the poor, opposition to civil rights and support for apartheid South Africa. The "moral" Reagan trained and supported terrorists, including the Nicaraguan contras ("the moral equal of our Founding Fathers" who killed over 30,000 people, and Islamic radicals in Afghanistan who later formed the al-Qaeda network.
Reagan was also a liar. In November 1986, he publicly denied that his administration had been illegally selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to fund the contras. One week later he was forced to retract this statement, but denied that the sale was part of a deal to free U.S. hostages. The following year, Reagan admitted that there had been an arms-for-hostages deal, but denied he knew anything about it.
In 1992, that too proved to be a lie when former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was compelled to release notes from a January 1986 meeting revealing, "President decided to go with Israeli-Iranian offer to release our 5 hostages in return for sale of 4,000 TOWs [U.S. missiles] to Iran by Israel."
The man whose administration spearheaded class warfare on behalf of the rich, dragged American politics to the right, and rebuilt US imperialism after the Vietnam debacle, is dead. Good riddance.
Phil Gasper is professor of philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California. He is a member of the National Writers Union and a frequent contributor to Socialist Worker and the International Socialist Review . He can be contacted at [email protected]
posted on June 7, 2004 11:22:47 AM new
Park: i said:
"yes, Neroter, i think he did. he accepted his governorship as a mandate from the people over pat brown. one will read that his assertivness in telling his own state department, that he would tell Gorbachev just what he, indeed, told him. he didnt just call a "spade a spade," he called it
a //////// shovel sometimes..that is, he once said, "that is why i am President," to someone who questioned him."
----------
President Reagan[whooops-almost misspelllled his name too], was the man who stopped the cold war and opened eastern europe to democracy.
remember this was the second time we made the evil empire blink.
----------
Having said that, i agree both were[are] both great presidents; and we will reap rewards from their leadership for generations.
-----
myhumbleopinionofcourse, myoldtoy
--------------------------------------
you said:
"Post your PC crap NOW and show everyone here your true colors"
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first, and, to reiterate, your thoughts were well aimed, and not taken wrong.
but seems my thoughts are viewed as crap.
fyi, i wouldnt wipemybutt with gasper's paper. and i wouldnt have c/pasted it without a disclaimer[like this damned opinion is not mine]...that doesnt mean i would NOT have posted it...but i do agree with you about ignoring something, and/or people - otherwise i could blow holes in the post big enuf to drive an abrams thru...hope you get my drift this time...okay?
myoldtoy
