Yeah right - Ronald Regan, defeater of Communism, the man who used Nancy's astrologer to make decisions of State, "trees cause polution", "we begin bombing in five minutes", "empire of evil" - Iran/Contra, trickle down economics, Grenada - George HW Bush for VP - what a great guy. He will not be missed.

Well, Mr. Burgess, perhaps not by you, but I think that there a millions who believe and testify otherwise. Maybe a scroll down to the June 5th "Farewell" post might suggest diferently to you.

Thanks for commenting. My only request is that you are civil and polite.

I'm amused by the fact that of the 8 things Mr. Burgess cites, I supported *counts* 5 or 6 of them, there is one that rides the fence. The other two were outside of his sphere of influence, but were still very much his responsibility.

But thank you Brian, you've reminded this sentimental supporter of a few more things this great man did.

That's a great shot of him, isn't it? It's pure 1980's.

There is no need to be disrespectful to Burgess for stating an opinion surely Patrick? Here is an interesting article from www.axisofjustice.org....maybe a little left wing for the majority of you folks, but i think this site is a bit right wing for me, yet i still visit regularly! Here is the article.....its a tad long.....

Reagan's Passing

I did not say anything yesterday about Ronald Reagan's death. The day a person dies he has a right to be left alone.

But yesterday is now history, and Reagan's legacy should not pass without comment.

Reagan had an ability to project a kindly image, and was well liked personally by virtually everyone who knew him, apparently. But it always struck me that he was a mean man. I remember learning, in the late 1960s, of the impact Michael Harrington's The Other America had had on Johnson's War on Poverty. Harrington demonstrated that in the early 1960s there was still hunger in places like Appalachia, deriving from poverty. It was hard for middle class Americans to believe, and Lyndon Johnson, who represented many poor people himself, was galvanized to take action.

I remember seeing a tape of Reagan speaking in California from that era. He said that he had heard that some asserted there was hunger in America. He said it sarcastically. He said, "Sure there is; they're dieting!" or words to that effect. This handsome Hollywood millionnaire making fun of people so poor they sometimes went to bed hungry seemed to me monstrous. I remember his wealthy audience of suburbanites going wild with laughter and applause. I am still not entirely sure what was going on there. Did they think Harrington's and similar studies were lies? Did they blame the poor for being poor, and resent demands on them in the form of a few tax dollars, to address their hunger?

Then when he was president, at one point Reagan tried to cut federal funding for school lunches for the poor. He tried to have ketchup reclassified as a vegetable to save money. Senator Heinz gave a speech against this move. He said that ketchup is a condiment, not a vegetable, and that he should know.

The meanness was reflected, as many readers have noted, in Reagan's "blame the victim" approach to the AIDS crisis. His inability to come to terms with the horrible human tragedy here, or with the emerging science on it, made his health policies ineffective and even destructive.

Reagan's mania to abolish social security was of a piece with this kind of sentiment. In the early 20th century, the old were the poorest sector of the American population. The horrors of old age--increasing sickness, loss of faculties, marginalization and ultimately death--were in that era accompanied by fear of severe poverty. Social security turned that around. The elderly are no longer generally poverty-stricken. The government can do something significant to improve people's lives. Reagan, philosophically speaking, hated the idea of state-directed redistribution of societal wealth. (His practical policies often resulted in such redistribution de facto, usually that of tossing money to the already wealthy). So he wanted to abolish social security and throw us all back into poverty in old age.

Reagan hated any social arrangement that empowered the poor and the weak. He was a hired gun for big corporations in the late 1950s, when he went around arguing against unionization. Among his achievements in office was to break the air traffic controllers' union. It was not important in and of itself, but it was a symbol of his determination that the powerless would not be allowed to organize to get a better deal. He ruined a lot of lives. I doubt he made us safer in the air.

Reagan hated environmentalism. His administration was not so mendacious as to deny the problems of increased ultraviolet radition (from a depleted ozone layer) and global warming. His government suggested people wear sunglasses and hats in response. At one point Reagan suggested that trees cause pollution. He was not completely wrong (natural processes can cause pollution), but his purpose in making the statement seems to have been that we should therefore just accept lung cancer from bad city air, which was caused by automobiles and industry, not by trees.

In foreign policy, Reagan abandoned containment of the Soviet Union as a goal and adopted a policy of active roll-back. Since the Soviet Union was already on its last legs and was not a system that could have survived long, Reagan's global aggressiveness was simply unnecessary. The argument that Reagan's increases in military funding bankrupted the Soviets by forcing them to try to keep up is simply wrong. Soviet defense spending was flat in the 1980s.

Reagan's aggression led him to shape our world in most unfortunate ways. Although it would be an exaggeration to say that Ronald Reagan created al-Qaeda, it would not be a vast exaggeration. The Carter administration began the policy of supporting the radical Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan who were waging an insurgency against the Soviets after their invasion of that country. But Carter only threw a few tens of millions of dollars at them. By the mid-1980s, Reagan was giving the holy warriors half a billion dollars a year. His officials strong-armed the Saudis into matching the US contribution, so that Saudi Intelligence chief Faisal al-Turki turned to Usamah Bin Laden to funnel the money to the Afghans. This sort of thing was certainly done in coordination with the Reagan administration. Even the Pakistanis thought that Reagan was a wild man, and balked at giving the holy warriors ever more powerful weapons. Reagan sent Orrin Hatch to Beijing to try to talk the Chinese into pressuring the Pakistanis to allow the holy warriors to receive stingers and other sophisticated ordnance. The Pakistanis ultimately relented, even though they knew there was a severe danger that the holy warriors would eventually morph into a security threat in their own right.

Reagan's officials so hated the Sandinista populists in Nicaragua that they shredded the constitution. Congress cut off money for the rightwing death squads fighting the Sandinistas. Reagan's people therefore needed funds to continue to run the rightwing insurgency. They came up with a complicated plan of stealing Pentagon equipment, shipping it to Khomeini in Iran, illegally taking payment from Iran for the weaponry, and then giving the money to the rightwing guerrillas in Central America. At the same time, they pressured Khomeini to get US hostages in Lebanon, taken by radical Shiites there, released. It was a criminal cartel inside the US government, and Reagan allowed it, either through collusion or inattention. It is not a shining legacy, to have helped Khomeini and then used the money he gave them to support highly unsavory forces in Central America. (Some of those forces were involved after all in killing leftwing nuns).

Although Reagan's people were willing to shore up Iranian defenses during the Iran-Iraq War, so as to prevent a total Iraqi victory, they also wanted to stop Iran from taking over Iraq. They therefore winked at Saddam's use of chemical weapons. Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad twice, the second time with an explicit secret message that the US did not really mind if Saddam gassed the Iranian troops, whatever it said publicly.

I only saw Reagan once in person. I was invited to a State Department conference on religious freedom, I think in 1986. It was presided over by Elliot Abrams, whom I met then for the first time. We were taken to hear Reagan speak on religious freedom. It was a cause I could support, but I came away strangely dissatisfied. I had a sense that "religious freedom" was being used as a stick to beat those regimes the Reagan administration did not like. It wasn't as though the plight of the Moro Muslims in the Philippines was foremost on the agenda (come to think of it, perhaps no Muslims or Muslim groups were involved in the conference).

Reagan's policies thus bequeathed to us the major problems we now have in the world, including a militant Islamist International whose skills were honed in Afghanistan with Reagan's blessing and monetary support; and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which the Reagan administration in some cases actually encouraged behind the scenes for short-term policy reasons. His aggressive foreign policy orientation has been revived and expanded, making the US into a neocolonial power in the Middle East. Reagan's gutting of the unions and attempt to remove social supports for the poor and the middle class has contributed to the creation of an America where most people barely get by while government programs that could help create wealth are destroyed.

Reagan's later life was debilitated by Alzheimer's. I suppose he may already have had some symptoms while president, which might explain some of his memory lapses and odd statements, and occasional public lapses into woolly-mindedness. Ironically, Alzheimer's could be cured potentially by stem cell research. In the United States, where superstition reigns over reason, the religious Right that Reagan cultivated has put severe limits on such research. His best legacy may be Nancy Reagan's argument that those limitations should be removed in his memory. There are 4 million Alzheimers sufferers in the US, and 50% of persons living beyond the age of 85 develop it. There are going to be a lot of such persons among the Baby Boomers. By reversing Reaganism, we may be able to avoid his fate.

Well, they "tried" to have ketchup count as a vegetable when the were trying to find a way to cut $1.5 Billion from the school lunches program—but didn't succeed.

But in 1998—under whose watch?—salsa was reclassified successfully as a vegetable.

Geez. I don't even care. But don't chisle at this great man, Reagan, when Clinton gets away with the same thing only because it's chunkier and appeals to the majority of Californians. :-)

Reagan's goal was to trim spending. It had to come from somewhere. It was going to hurt whomever got their freebies taken away. Why is ANYONE "entitled" to free lunch? It's great that we feed the poor. But do we owe it to them? No. It's a gift. Not a right. The same goes for health care: it would be nice if we could all afford it, but it is not a right. Never has been.

It's a BLESSING.

People forget that.

Could that possibly be because salsa has actual vegetables right there in it? Shit, is this even the issue here? So you thinks its perfectly acceptable for Reagan to make fun of people with nothing to eat, and then take support away from them? Does social security ring any bells? Ever read the preamble to the Constitution? you will find the phrase ''promote the general welfare'' in there. Again, does the New Deal ring any bells? You are wrong - it is the duty of the government, and the right of citizins to receive crucial aid. Maybe the US should have a national health service? The government can certainly afford to do it.

Chisling a great man? i disagree. Just because he has passed away, doesnt mean I should give him blind respect and admiration. Some promoter of liberty, that he wouldnt even provide relief for people in his own country....better to use money to buy guns with to give to right wing insurgents right?

GR, if you could just html code the link next time :) Oh and remember, no swearing either, 'K? I don't mind you commenting here- everyone needs to be challenged-makes us all more solid or can perhaps change a mind. I am not typically a poliblogger, so perhaps that is why you (a lefty) can stand to visit my (a righty) site?

P.S. It wasn't Patrick who addressed Mr. Burgess' comments- it was Jeremy, bu tI don't think he was disrespectful; more tongue in cheek, eh Jeremy?

P.P.S. Yes, Patrick, I have many that I like, but that one is my favorite.

Rae, I didn't make any disrespectful comments to Burgess. However, I did say it's pure "1908's" which should have said, "1980's" doh!

Patrick, wasn't me that thought you were- I know you to be a gentleman. It was GR; but see above that I gently corrected him.

Oh, and I knew that you intended "80s." I'll correct it for you :)

Sarcastic Passive, maybe.
Disrespectful? Never!

If anything I was complimentary.
But what do I know? I'm just some kid in the desert. *tongue-in-cheek*
(Hey, if you can't make fun of yourself, who can you really make fun of?)

Yes, there are millions of Americans who loved, and will miss, Ronald Reagan. But, someone needs to talk to the African Americans in this country who lived during his Presidency for a more accurate depiction of his policies.

But hey, when it's not you who's affected poorly by the economic policies, of course you loved, and will miss, Ronald Reagan.

When it's not you who was ignored while the AIDS epidemic was allowed to spread like wildfire, of course you loved, and will miss, Ronald Reagan.

When it's not you who was offended when Ronald Reagan called Dr. Martin Luther King a Communist, of course you loved, and will miss, Ronald Reagan.

It amazes me how little people care when it's not you. Wait. . . not it doesn't. God Bless America.

Hi, Genia.

Hmm, well, I didn't know Reagan's budget for AIDS off the top of my head. I did do a research paper on AIDS twice in my high school years. I was very concerned with the epidemic. I was not yet a taxpayer and not legally able to vote, but knowing what I do now about Mr. Reagan, I would have voted for him both times should I have been of legal age.

I Googled "Ronald Reagan AIDS budget" and came up with several interesting sites with even more interesting information:

Deroy Murdock of The National Review (online)presents this evidence:

"In fact, the 40th president first spoke of AIDS no later than September 17, 1985. Responding to a reporter's question on AIDS research, the president told a White House news conference:

'[I]ncluding what we have in the budget for '86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I'm sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it'll be 126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.' " (reference).

And over here, via Andrew Sullivan:

"Nevertheless, the Reagan presidency spent some $5.7 billion on HIV in its two terms - not peanuts. The resources increased by 450 percent in 1983, 134 percent in 1984, 99 percent the next year and 148 percent the year after. Yes, the Congress was critical in this. But by 1986, Reagan had endorsed a large prevention and research effort and declared in his budget message that AIDS "remains the highest public health priority of the Department of Health and Human Services."

He says this after criticizing the administration for not doing a better job of prevention in the way of letting people accurrately know how to protect themselves.

This was also very interesting.

So, when I read all of that (and remember, I didn't google anything to do with my political party), I would have to say that while it appears he was uncomfortable (and there were many his age who were at the time-that much I remember from my research back in the '80's) with saying "AIDS," he did support budgeting for combatting and studying the virus. I don't think he "caused" the deaths of people. It wasn't until the 90's that AIDS drug cocktails were discovered to have added longevity to those living with the disease and aren't scientists now finding that there are certain people who seem to have a genetic predisposal to being able to live with HIV without ever developing AIDS (I recall hearing that on NPR, but could have my facts mixed up here).

I read La Shawn Barber daily and she thought that Ronald Reagan was a fine president.

Ronald Reagan was the president who signed into legislation Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a national holiday, not Jimmy Carter who refused. I did find this, which says that Dr. King did associate with known communists, but that doesn't convince me that he was one. I didn't get enough time to read through all of this (it is short but I have hungry children to feed).

My mother was a single mother working as a nurse in the 1980's. She put herself through school when I was quite young and she has worked hard her whole life. She has not been a perfect mother, but she did show herself to be an example of what hard work can do for one determined enough to work. She was passed over for permotion several times at a small town hospital because she was a woman (she was told this directly) and the men who received the positions had a "family to support." Huh? Because I am white, because I am a Republican, because I am not "poor," you determine those things to make me discompassionate, Genia? That is a pretty stereotypical thing to say, and I am surprised to read a black lesbian stereotype a person.

Hi Rae:

I have purposefly refrained from posting anything on Reagan on the SistersTalk blog until the whole situation dies down. Your information is in sharp contrast to my information. Of course, you have to remember the source.

I distinctly remember hearing about (and reading about) Reagan and how he didn't want to sign the bill to make MLK's birthday a holiday, but to NOT do so would ruin the reputation he'd established for himself. As for why Jimmy Carter didn't sign the bill, I'll save that for the SistersTalk blog.

Now, why the press decided to take it easy on Reagan is beyond me. Perhaps the country had been through so much already and any signs of improvement were a good thing -- well, signs of improvement for some people.

As far as Reagan was concerned, AIDS was a fag disease. It wasn't until the Ryan White story broke (somewhere around 1985, 1986) that suddenly Reagan couldn't ignore the AIDS epidemic anymore by calling it a fag disease -- although he'd learned of the epidemic YEARS before from his family doctor. As a matter of fact, it was a very common attitude that AIDS was a fag disease until Ryan White -- Reagan was not immune to that prejudice.

Reagan made a lot of people happy. He was against Affirmative Action and ensuring Blacks had equal access to good housing. He said something to the effects of, "Blacks had no intention to move into White neigborhoods. They're just making trouble."

Those closest to him in his Administration have made pretty consistent comments about his character. My research has been somewhat shocking, to say the least.

As for this:

I am a Republican, because I am not "poor," you determine those things to make me discompassionate, Genia? That is a pretty stereotypical thing to say, and I am surprised to read a black lesbian stereotype a person.

I wasn't even referring to Republicans. White People. Or Rich People. I was referring to anyone who can't be empathetic when things are going very well for themselves and not so well for others. I don't see that as being stereotypical; I see that as calling a "spade a spade."

On another note: you've been busy over on ST! I can barely keep up.