Political Insider

By EW

June 1, 2007 10:35 AM | Link to this

Can we also see an exhibit of the Iranian hostages that were held for 444 days while this poor excuse of an ex-President stood idle and waiting on Ronald Reagan to save the day as well as the country. Does the center show a picture of the mile long gas lines we waited in on our assigned days to buy gas, if there was any left on our days to buy. Can we go to the center and see a credit card issued to a person with outstanding credit when the interest rate was twenty per-cent. What about pictures of the Panama Canal Carter gave away, any of those decorating the walls of the Center. How about a framed home mortgage loan we paid during the wonderful Carter years, the twenty plus per-cent on average home mortgage loans we had then. And last but surely not least any pictures of America before Carter started the immigration we’re in today? Oh those wonderful Carter years.

By War Eagle

June 1, 2007 12:33 PM | Link to this

EW is Correct. This man is a disgrace to our country-he drove it to the brink of BANKRUPTCY. By being a “CHRISTIAN” and trying diplomacy, which any idiot knows ARABS don’t understand diplomacy except if they do all the dictating, our people were in IRAN for over a year! He was an appeaser and tried to give the dictators of the world what they wanted in exchnge for “peace.” Well, Reagan had an answer fo the dictators-THE BOMB! See Mr. Libya run and Mr. Castro run. See Russia Fall and the Berlin Wall. Democrats have had as their mantra-tax and spend and do whatever is necessary to get votes. Clinton sold China secret info for millions in campaign contributions-they line their own pockets. If Ted Kennedy made the poor work for their entitlements, he would not be re elected. We need a strong military and the right to use THE BOMB that we dropped on Japan and drop it on Iran and the mountains of Pakistan where Al Qaida is hiding out. That is the way to end the war and eliminate the Muslim Terrorists.

By Susan

June 1, 2007 12:44 PM | Link to this

EW and War Eagle you are both full of crap. Mr. Nicox ad Kissinger are resposible for the Iran situtation. And if Bush inherited the poor economy from Clinton as you right-wingers like to exclaim, then Carter inherited the engergy problems from Ford. Remember, Ford’s program to turn off lights in the White House to save energy? Regan said on the campaign trail that the first thing he would do was dismantle the energy department. Didn’t need it. However; if your esteemed idol had any faculties while in office, maybe we would have alternative viable fuels to replace gasoline. At least Carter tried to get an alternative feul policy going. Big Business - Big Oil wouldn’t hear of it.

By Susan

June 1, 2007 12:49 PM | Link to this

P.S. EW - if you looked at a credit card today, you would see interest rates still at 20-21%. When are you republicans going to fix this?

By EW

June 1, 2007 1:19 PM | Link to this

My credit card interest rate is 9% Susan, you idiot. I have not screwed up my creidt like you apparently have. If yours is double digits my dear, your spending habits match those of your voting habits…. irresponsible, reckless and just plain STUPID.

By E T F

June 1, 2007 1:24 PM | Link to this

Ronald was one of the worst presidents ever. Yet people like EW, et al have elevated that evil man to almost god-like status.

Yet facts are awkward things and while often ignored do not change. And the facts are Reagan was a disaster not only for the world, but also for America. Indeed, if by “America” it is meant the majority of the population, then Reagan must be considered one of the most anti-American Presidents of the last century.

For all his rhetoric about freedom, Reagan stood squarely with the oppressors at home and abroad.

In America he implemented a class war which saw widening of inequality, tax cuts for the rich and the average hourly earnings for most workers falling. The share of national income going to capital rose. The benefits of economic growth accrued to the elite with most of the country’s income gains going to the top 1 or 2 percent of households. His policies reversed the trend toward greater distribution of wealth and have led to the greatest concentration of wealth since the days of “robber baron” capitalism of the 1890s. Average household income was only maintained because more women went out to work (so helping to destroy the “family values” Reagan said he supported). Unemployment soared. Benefit levels for the poor, already low, were frozen and Reagan imposed enormous cuts to social welfare programs and the Veterans Administration, moves that led to such an enormous rise in the homeless population. He also enriched agri-business at the expense of small farmers, continuing the decline of the family farm. He attacked organised labour, with the firing of the air traffic controllers showing that union busting was back. Not to mention his terrible environmental record, of course.

Abroad, he aimed numerous authoritarian regimes. He toasted Ferdinand Marcos, supported Argentine fascist generals as well as Manuel Noriega. Not to mention Saddam, whom Reagan supported and armed, not letting the gassing of the Kurds affect the deals being cut — he even supplied Saddam with “dual-use” items, including chemicals, to show how important dead Kurds were to the Whitehouse. He also took Iraq off the list of states declared by the state department as sponsoring terrorism.

Reagan also supported the apartheid regime in South Africa. As the black majority rebelled and the regime responded with extra-judicial killings, abductions, torture and aggression against neighbouring states, Reagan resisted all attempts to impose economic sanctions against Botha’s regime and vetoed UN resolutions against South Africa. If that was not enough, he insisted on aiding the deposed Khmer Rouge and so prolonged a civil war. He also argued that it should take Cambodia’s seat at the UN. He also welcomed Angola’s Unita to the White House and described this murderous group as winning “a victory that electrifies the world and brings great sympathy and assistance from other nations to those struggling for freedom”.

Then there was the illegal funnelling of aid to the Nicaraguan “contras”, terrorists used by the US to undermine the radical Sandinista government. Reagan’s Whitehouse even sold weapons to Iran and used the profits of this criminal trade to fund his illegal war against Nicaragua. Reagan escaped impeachment during the Iran-Contra Scandal because he “could not recall” in response to more than one hundred questions during the Congressional hearings.

The people of El Salvador will have a different perspective on Reagan, given that the right wing ARENA, armed by Reagan money, weapons, and military training from the School of the America’s, slaughtered more than 80,000 of them. In Guatemala, tens of thousands were also murdered under the rule of Reagan’s ally, General Rios Montt. Or those Nicaraguans in the “soft targets” (like schools and hospitals) beloved by Reagan’s Contra terrorists, whom he hailed as the “moral equivalent of our founding fathers.” These “freedom fighters” murdered, tortured and mutilated civilians (including children and women) in order to terrorise a people to vote as America wanted. So it is doubtful whether the families of the hundreds of thousands in Central America murdered by death squads armed and funded by Reagan are mourning his passing.

And yet the myth of Reagan as a strong leader willing to fight for freedom is still peddled. As Reagan said, “facts are stupid.” Clearly, the removal of the reformist government from the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada must be considered as a turning point in world history. Not that the collapse of the USSR can be laid at his door. Without his strong man rhetoric, the reforms that brought about the collapse of Stalinism would have been implemented sooner. It was not Reagan who ended Stalinist tyranny but rather the hundreds of thousands of people across Eastern Europe who risked their lives taking to the streets who did so. The kind of people power Reagan spent so much energy crushing at home and in Central America.

All this is unsurprising as, for the right, freedom is equated to capitalism. Yet even here reality was at odds with the legend. While he slashed taxes for the richest, he raised taxes on the poor. He deregulated the Savings and Loan industry, enriching the few, and subsequently bailed it out at taxpayer expense when the dynamics of the market took its toll. He presided over such a corrupt and over-inflated stock market that it saw the largest one-day crash in its history, greater than in 1929. He talked about free-trade but backed the protectionist measures. He embraced Monetarism, causing the worse slump since the Great Depression. On the plus side, this was ideal for breaking the back of working class resistance (as intended). He then used military Keynesianism to bolster the economy, with defence-spending and deficits rising to astronomical heights — aided by enormous and outrageous military contracts for which taxpayers paid hundreds of dollars for nuts, bolts, and toilet seats (all the while AIDS research was under funded). And yet the 1980s had the slowest growth of any decade in the post-World War II era.

After his two terms spending by the federal government was (in real terms) 25% higher, the federal civilian workforce had increased from 2.8 million to 3 million and federal spending was basically unchanged (at over 20% of GDP). That the Ronald Reagan Building is the largest government building in Washington says more about his legacy than the eulogies we have had to suffer recently. So Reagan as “anti-government crusader” is a myth. He got the government off the bosses’ back, sure, but not off the workers’. The capitalist dream of the state as little more than a defender of property, as a rod for the workers’ back, was revived.

What of his other legacies? His “war on drugs” was a costly (and authoritarian) failure while his “war in terror” saw a C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (with more than eighty civilians killed) along with extensive support for state terrorism by client regimes. He “cut and run” from Lebanon after a suicide bomber killed more than 200 American soldiers. His Whitehouse also armed the Mojahedin to resist the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, one of whose groups evolved into the Taliban and another (with CIA approval) into al-Qaida. Combined with US support for Saddam, would the current (equally bogus) “war on terror” be necessary if it had not been for Reagan?

If an accurate account of his time in the White House was presented the obvious conclusion to draw would be that Reagan was a miserable failure — unless you were rich. If the rich get richer, you can preside over the worse recession since the 1930s and subsequent historically poor economic recovery and see it praised as an economic miracle. If the rich get richer, you can kill as many foreigners as you like and be praised as a man of peace. If the rich get richer you can concentrate wealth to extreme levels and still be called a man of the people. This explains the advanced symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease the media and some parts of the public have exhibited of late.

Yet we should not forget that Reagan, like Thatcher, only applied the policies their erstwhile opponents had already started to implement. Perhaps they took them to a higher level, but the writing was on the wall. Nor should we forget that the Spanish Socialist Party and Labour Party in New Zealand applied the same Thatcherite policies when in power. Clinton and Blair have continued the neo-liberal policies. After all, they were all subject to the same pressures from the state bureaucracy and big business. Which suggests that putting your faith in the ballot-box is illusionary. Only an extra-parliamentary movement can curb the excesses of state and capitalist power, for regardless of who gets elected the needs of capital are always placed first.

By Dan

June 1, 2007 1:42 PM | Link to this

ETF - While I agree with everything stated in your post, please give credit where credit is due and don’t plagiarize.

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/writers/anarcho/history/ronaldreagan.html

By Ed

June 1, 2007 2:47 PM | Link to this

The look of shock on my face that ETF just didn’t think all that up off the top of his head. Again, read my words and those of Presidential historians; Carters’ legacy was the single worse in modern history. Now, that could all change if the Breck Girl gets elected and we know that will happen. Not. Or, say for instance the country goes into a coma and elects the shrill Queen of Mean herself, Hillary, but nah that won’t happen either. The one candidate who’s support totally baffles me is Obama. I have asked so many people who support him why they support him and they stand there and say it’s someone different. Inetelligent reply to say the least. Isn’t anyone but the sitting President someone different? I guess that’s ll you can say about someone no one knows anything about and who appears to be given a green light by the liberal press about his past writings and doings, ever so fearful of being labeled racist because of his mix raced background if they print a negative word about him. The vote is the dangerous thing in the hands of unqualified voters but I bet Congress or the Courts will never allow ONLY Republicans to vote, that would be way too intelligent of a move.

By Sarah

June 1, 2007 3:04 PM | Link to this

Carter’s legacy will only be considered “the single worse in modern history” (and I really want to know what right-wing “presidential historians” you are referencing) until January of 2009, when the new title holder can take his place, unless of course you want to bypass the modern history portion and just say that George W. Bush is the worst president in history. Period.

Historians won’t disagree - I should know. I am one.

By Anti-NeoCon

June 1, 2007 3:26 PM | Link to this

E T F tells is like it was and is.

Republicans are REALLY gonna hate ‘08 !

By Will Jones

June 1, 2007 3:30 PM | Link to this

David Rockefeller (CFR-Chairman Emeritus), and his lapdog Henry Kissinger, insisted that President Carter permit the deposed Shah of Iran entry for cancer treatment in the U.S..The same pair of “clowns” just “happened” to show up on the Board of Directors of the BNL in Rome, Italy, when BNL’s $3B USDA-guaranteed loans - blamed on a now prematurely dead yuppie in Buckhead - turned up in Saddam Hussein’s pocket. A righteous judge refused the Gov’t’s fraudulent case being brought by U.S. Prosecutor, now FBI head, Mueller, and fake American, unable to charge Karl Rove, Fitzgerald.. We had already been put on notice that our Embassy would be taken hostage were we to allow the Shah entry. The “October Surprise,” by Reagan/Bush campaigner and White House staffer, Barbara Honegger, lays out the treason committed by JFK-killer George H.W. Bush, father of the homosexual draft-dodger, cheated in the White House by the Roman Catholics on the Suprem Court, who has gone on to commit 9-11 in service to the same Fifth Column BIG OIL interests.

Annapolis-grad Carter, while well-meaning, lacks the stones to bring true charges against those he knows committed treason by negotiating with Iran during his presidency. Bush, the elder, and Knight of Malta, conveniently/timely dead while recovering nicely in a top hospital, Wm Casey ran the operation. Knight of Malta and previous DCI McCone was working with the same Bush when they assassinated JFK to keep us in Rome’s Vietnam (reversing NSAM263) and to return Rome’s bankers in the Fed control of our ;money supply(having been bumped from that ripoff by JFK’s Exec Order 11,100.

Carter did not commit 9-11, draft-dodging, closet-queen W. did. Carter’s presidency suffered at the hands of the same fascist faction that funded Hitler through Prescott Bush, W.’s Knight of Malta-grandfather. The Vatican-banker Fed and the Roman Catholic “elite” of Wall Street ran up the interest rates on Carter after he fired 70,000 Roman Catholics from the employ of the CIA.

Bush did 9-11. His father killed JFK to send 58,000 of us to die for the pope in Vietnam. His grandfather was Hitler’s banker. They “get away” with it because they are fronting for Rockefeller and the Roman Catholic Church. Illegal immigration, anyone? Those who defend Bush are servants of the “real Anti-Christ,” identified by America’s Founder, Thomas Jefferson. Rome must fall “in a day.” Let that day be tomorrow at the latest.

Expropriate all assets of the Rome/Rockefeller pyramid. Establish a constitutional money. Hang those guilty of treason. Try those guilty of Misprision of Treason.

By Ed

June 1, 2007 3:43 PM | Link to this

Will Jones only a sissy man, such as yourself, uses the word queen when describing another man. Anti, why will Republicans be dissappointed, have you seen the polls? All polls has Rudy in double digit leads. No wonder you idiots run to a roof in a hurricane and wait on the g’ment to save your dumb arses.

By Will Jones

June 1, 2007 4:11 PM | Link to this

Bush is no man, and any who thinks so is mistaken, at best. He is a draft-dodging hypocritical homosexual who lacks the integrity to “come out of the closet.” Those who share his perversion will try to defend his infamy to no avail.

James Guckert/Jeff Gannon, Bush’s homosexual consort, signed into the White House’s social entrance 202 times in a two-year period. W. is a pervert…which is not a hanging offense. W. committed 9-11…treason is a hanging offense.

“Curious” that the evidence of his family’s multi-generational treason is presented and all his “defender” can do is try to hide W.’s obvious homosexuality…must be a draft-dodger as well.

By Gary

June 1, 2007 4:41 PM | Link to this

And i thought the left on TV and the Newspapers were bad….boy Susan, ETF, and Will Jones make Keith Obermann look like a moderate. Carter doing something about alternative energy? Reagan the worst President? GWB a homosexual? Please put down the crack pipe, get a book out, and actually study history. Its a sad sad world that these people could actually vote. Thank God for the election of 08. Yeah i dont think America will vote Hillary and her socialist “we’re in this together” policies she just talked about. Thanks Hilary for giving the GOP a pre-election gift. Can’t wait to see your face on election night conceeding to Rudy or Fred.

By Will Jones

June 1, 2007 5:35 PM | Link to this

Rudy and Fred: two law school draft-dodgers.

Why haven’t the shirkers used their law degrees to bring to justice the criminals who killed Kennedy to keep us dying in Vietnam? Because they’re happy working for the Anti-Christ.

By lucky

June 3, 2007 9:41 PM | Link to this

Do they serve Billy Beer at the Cahtah libeery? Is a double wide white house on display? Can I get a peanut butter samich at the center? Hopefully they do not display any christmas lights since Jimmie said we would save energy by turning them off.

By Bitter EX democrackkk

June 3, 2007 9:51 PM | Link to this

As senior advisor to the CPD - Commission on Presidential Debates, Carter COULD call for America’s most important political debate to be opened up to ALL qualified candidates, which would be ‘real democratic’, but when challenged on this for several years, this former Presidunce REFUSES to do the right thing. The CPD violates your voting civil rights by denying equal access…why do demopublicans want to control the power between only 2 parties? Folks like me are sick of this garbage…

STRIVE to be SMARTER than a democrackkk!

By Bitter EX democrackkk

June 3, 2007 9:56 PM | Link to this

Ron Paul/Mitt Romney 2008!

Rudy and McCain are tired…Thompson is a joke…

By Redneck

June 3, 2007 10:11 PM | Link to this

Anti-neo-con, ETF and Will Jones, I don’t know what you’ve been smoking but don’t get on the highway till it wears off. Idiots!!!

By Anonymous

June 4, 2007 9:44 AM | Link to this

There’s nothing that p** off good, patriotic, Christian Americans than the memory of a president who actually ACTED like a Christian.

Carter didn’t kill anywhere NEAR enough people to make these “followers of Christ” happy.