A LEADER! A WORLD LEADER! THEE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!

(p.S. RONALD REAGAN DID NOTHING FOR THE FARMERS.)

I served in both the Carter and 1st Reagan admins. Reagan was a much better cis. Though he completely dropped the ball on Iran. The middle east would be a very different and quieter place today had Reagan done the right thing.

Instead of focusing on a distraction like Reagan. Why doesent RNN focus on the constant embarassment of Pres Obama administration by Vice President Joe Biden.

Its hard to understand the White House mindset of policy,if The President and Vice President, constantly and publicly, contradict one another other.

Obama should either fire Biden or forcefully muzzle him..... -like he did his (other) better half.

Reagan? I don't know, perhaps it was the times we lived in but as a whole, with Reagan you just felt more united, stronger and secure then we do today.

During the Carter years the economy was spinning out of control with sky high inflation and rationing of gas, with an overall sense of weakness and doom brought on by the hostage crises. Then Reagan came in and everything changed. The economy picked up, walls were coming down marking the end of the cold war and America was America again. A strong, proud, independent nation that should not be messed with. The leadership of Reagan helped make this possible.

You know strength and leadership is an image. The weak are led by others. The pretenders try to prove strength by engaging in endless battles around the world. However, a true leader could change the policy of others, without ever having to fire a shot. They have a way of letting others know we are capable and we will do what we say. That's the type of leader Reagan was. He helped to bring down walls both here and abroad and he made us believe in ourselves again.

HEADLINES THAT YOU NEVER READ IN THE REPUBLICAN/FOREIGN-OWNED U.S. MEDIA: / http://tinyurl.com/5mq65x

President Ronald Reagan is the first President to increase the National Debt by more than $100 Billion in one year!

President Ronald Reagan is the first President to increase the National Debt by more than $200 Billion in one year!

President George H.W. Bush is the first President to increase the National Debt by more than $300 Billion in one year!

President George H.W. Bush is the first President to increase the National Debt by more than $400 Billion in one year!

President George W. Bush is the first President to increase the National Debt by more than $500 Billion in one year!

President George W. Bush has increased the National Debt by more than $500 Billion AGAIN! Almost hits $600 Billion!

President George W. Bush has increased the National Debt by more than $500 Billion a THIRD time!

President George W. Bush has increased the National Debt by more than $500 Billion a FOURTH time!

President George W. Bush has increased the National Debt by more than $500 Billion a FIFTH time!

"Our National Debt is up Three Trillion Dollars under George W. Bush!" / http://www.lafn.org/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html

Trent Lott, Ronald Reagan and Republican Racism
Dec. 14, 2002 / http://tinyurl.com/d9w75
Southern Strategy: The race question has haunted Reagan and the GOP for decades
The same could be said, of course, about such Republican heroes as, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon or George Bush the elder, all of whom used coded racial messages to lure disaffected blue collar and Southern white voters away from the Democrats. Yet it's with Reagan, who set a standard for exploiting white anger and resentment rarely seen since George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, that the Republican's selective memory about its race-baiting habit really stands out.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399921,00.html

Republican Presidents Dereliction of Duty
Ronald Reagan, who did not retaliate for the murder of 278 United States Marines in Beirut and who violated his own terrorism policy by trading arms for hostages in what came to be called the Iran-Contra scandal; http://tinyurl.com/9s52o

George H.W. Bush, who did not retaliate for the Libyan murder of 259 passengers on Pan Am 103; who did not have an official counter terrorism policy; who left Saddam Hussein in place, requiring the United States to leave a large military presence in Saudi Arabia.

George W. Bush who did not alert the airports having known the CIA warning memo August 6, 2001: Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda determined to strike inside the United States. FBI warned John Ashcroft July 26, 2001 not to fly on commercial airlines.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories

The USS Stark Incident

president ronald reagan was a great president but had flaws in many respects as far as he increased taxes by 11 times and increased the federal debt, But compared to the n eo cons that have picked up his consevative mantle he was mild in his actions. The national debt did increase under president reagan but reagan was willing to compromise on items like social security not like the ones today who would not increase the national debt and would rather see the country go in to foreclosure and wreck the full faith and credit of the united states government, Also these present arragant liars who call themselves republicans will not try to fix medicare and the health care bill but make draconian cuts and eliminate these programs. They also will not cut defense but every social programs. The neo cons cry about corporations are paying the highrest tax rate is false. With all their tax breaks they pay 4% and are sitting on 2 trillion of debt. Rep Issa has sent over 2000 letters to employers asking what regulations should be removed. Since when did Isssa sent letters to middle class asking how they could improve the economy. The republicans in reagan era were more moderate and not the extreme right like in office today

I was apolitical all the way up until the Reagan presidency. He did inspire national confidence, and I applauded him for this. But when he fired all the air traffic controllers I was horrified at this fatal wound to the power of unions. When he cut the FCC down from an advocate for the public to a political eunuch, I dreaded the future of broadcast media and the chill this action might cast on other public forums. His supply side economic theory sounded daft and dangerous. It wasn't brilliant foresight on my part that all my fears became real. The greatest harm to come from his tenure was the phenomenon of mere good feelings being able to overcome a proper appreciation of the real damage he did to the middle and working classes.

Spot on Q. Although I would venture that it is difficult to judge any presidential administration without examining the precceding and post presidential generations.

As for all presidents, 75% of their effort goes torwards correcting the problems incurred by administrations of the previous generation-or so.

As for supply side. Reagan was adamant that supply side was to be free market, meaning corrections will take place and a nuetral FED. Volker was his own man. Post admins wouldnt allow the corrections to take place on their watch and Greenspan/Bernanke took their marching orders from the oval office. Hence the massive financial problems Obama must deal with. The fruit of supply side was seen in the Clinton Admin. Clinton failed by not putting on the brakes. Interest rates should have risen - dramaticly. Instead, he became the bankers best freind. Quid pro quo.
Bush 2 knew that if he took the correct fiscal course his entire first term legacy would be economic downturn. So he tried to borrow and spend his way out of it. Didnt work.

One could argue that our current financial problems were caused by Reaganomics. I'd venture to say they were caused by the Bush-Clinton-Bush versions of Reaganomics.

Sorta ironic that the Reaganomic theory is the current platform of the Obama admin.

Its interesting that both Mike Q and Fred find some agreement regarding Reagan and I too agree with aspects of both posts.

It would seem that even today, Reagan and his policies tend to inspire some degree of unity among left and right. Now compare that to the divisiveness of this administration and the prior, to help explain why little is getting done.

President Ronald Reagan: Winning the Cold War:

(Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan ordered American troops to invade Grenada and liberate the island from its ruling Marxist dictator. By itself this would have been an insignificant military action: Grenada is a tiny island of little geopolitical significance. But in reality the liberation of Grenada was a historic event, because it signaled the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine and inaugurated a sequence of events that brought down the Soviet empire itself.

The Brezhnev Doctrine stated simply that once a country went Communist, it would stay Communist. In other words, the Soviet empire would continue to advance and gain territory, but it would never lose any to the capitalist West. In 1980, when Reagan was elected president, the Brezhnev Doctrine was a frightening reality. Between 1974 and 1980, while the United States wallowed in post-Vietnam angst, 10 countries had fallen into the Soviet orbit: South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, South Yemen, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada and Afghanistan. Never had the Soviets lost an inch of real estate to the West.

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The liberation of Grenada changed that. For the first time, a Communist country had ceased to be Communist. Surely the Politburo in Moscow took notice of that. The Soviet leadership, we now know from later accounts, also noted that in Ronald Reagan the Americans had elected a new kind of president, one who had resolved not merely to 'contain' but actually to 'roll back' the Soviet empire.

Containment. Rollback. These sound like words from a very different era, and in a sense they are. With the sudden and spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union, we find ourselves in a new world. But how we got from there to here is still poorly understood. Oddly there is very little debate, even among historians, about how the Soviet empire collapsed so suddenly and unexpectedly. One reason for this, perhaps, is that many of the experts were embarrassingly wrong in their analysis and predictions about the future of the Soviet empire.

It is important to note that the doves or appeasers (the forerunners of today's antiwar movement) were wrong on every point. They showed a very poor understanding of the nature of communism. For example, when Reagan in 1983 called the Soviet Union an 'evil empire,' columnist Anthony Lewis of The New York Times became so indignant at Reagan's formulation that he searched through his repertoire for the appropriate adjective:'simplistic,''sectarian,' 'dangerous,' 'outrageous.' Finally Lewis settled on 'primitive…the only word for it.'

Writing during the mid-1980s, Strobe Talbott, then a journalist at Time and later an official in the Clinton State Department, faulted officials in the Reagan administration for espousing 'the early fifties goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,' an objective he considered unrealistic and dangerous. 'Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end,' Talbott scoffed, adding that if the Soviet economy was in a crisis of any kind 'it is a permanent, institutionalized crisis with which the U.S.S.R. has learned to live.'

Historian Barbara Tuchman argued that instead of employing a policy of confrontation, the West should ingratiate itself with the Soviet Union by pursuing 'the stuffed-goose option — that is, providing them with all the grain and consumer goods they need.' If Reagan had taken this advice when it was offered in 1982, the Soviet empire would probably still be around today.

The hawks or anti-Communists had a much better understanding of totalitarianism, and understood the necessity of an arms buildup to deter Soviet aggression. But they too were decidedly mistaken in their belief that Soviet communism was a permanent and virtually indestructible adversary. This Spenglerian gloom is conveyed by Whittaker Chambers' famous remark to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948 that in abandoning communism he was 'leaving the winning side for the losing side.'


The hawks were also mistaken about what steps were needed in the final stage to bring about the dismantling of the Soviet empire. During Reagan's second term, when he supported Mikhail Gorbachev's reform efforts and pursued arms reduction agreements with him, many conservatives denounced his apparent change of heart. William F. Buckley urged Reagan to reconsider his positive assessment of the Gorbachev regime: 'To greet it as if it were no longer evil is on the order of changing our entire position toward Adolf Hitler.' George Will mourned that 'Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West by elevating wishful thinking to the status of political philosophy.'

No one, and least of all an intellectual, likes to be proved wrong. Consequently there has been in the past decade a determined effort to rewrite the history of the Cold War. This revisionist view has now entered the textbooks, and is being pressed on a new generation that did not live through the Soviet collapse. There is no mystery about the end of the Soviet Union, the revisionists say, explaining that it suffered from chronic economic problems and collapsed of its own weight.

This argument is not persuasive. True, the Soviet Union during the 1980s suffered from debilitating economic problems. But these were hardly new: The Soviet regime had endured economic strains for decades, on account of its unworkable Socialist system. Moreover, why would economic woes in themselves bring about the end of the political regime? Historically, it is common for nations to experience poor economic performance, but never have food shortages or technological backwardness caused the destruction of a large empire. The Roman and Ottoman empires survived internal stresses for centuries before they were destroyed from the outside through military conflict.

Another dubious claim is that Mikhail Gorbachev was the designer and architect of the Soviet Union's collapse. Gorbachev was undoubtedly a reformer and a new kind of Soviet leader, but he did not wish to lead the party, and the regime, over the precipice. In his 1987 book Perestroika, Gorbachev presented himself as the preserver, not the destroyer, of socialism. Consequently, when the Soviet Union collapsed, no one was more surprised than Gorbachev.


President Reagan holds a meeting in the Oval Office on November 11, 1986, to discuss policy with his top advisers (from left) Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of State George Shultz, Attorney General Edwin Meese and White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

The man who got things right from the start was, at first glance, an unlikely statesman. He became the leader of the Free World with no experience in foreign policy. Some people thought he was a dangerous warmonger; others considered him a nice fellow but a bit of a bungler. Nevertheless, this California lightweight turned out to have as deep an understanding of communism as Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This rank amateur developed a complex, often counterintuitive strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union, which hardly anyone on his staff fully endorsed or even understood. Through a combination of vision, tenacity, patience and improvisational skill, he produced what Henry Kissinger termed 'the most stunning diplomatic feat of the modern era.' Or as Margaret Thatcher put it, 'Reagan won the cold war without firing a shot.'

Reagan had a much more sophisticated understanding of communism than either the hawks or the doves. In 1981 he told an audience at the University of Notre Dame: 'The West won't contain communism. It will transcend communism. It will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.' The next year, speaking to the British House of Commons, Reagan predicted that if the Western alliance remained strong it would produce a 'march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history.'

These prophetic assertions — dismissed as wishful rhetoric at the time — raise the question: How did Reagan know that Soviet communism faced impending collapse when the most perceptive minds of his time had no inkling of what was to come? To answer this question, the best approach is to begin with Reagan's jokes, which contain a profound analysis of the working of socialism. Over the years Reagan had developed an extensive collection of stories that he attributed to the Soviet people themselves.

One of Reagan's favorite stories concerned a man who goes to the Soviet bureau of transportation to order an automobile. He is informed that he will have to put down his money now, but there is a 10-year wait. The man fills out all the various forms, has them processed through the various agencies, and finally he gets to the last agency. He pays them his money and they say, 'Come back in 10 years and get your car.' He asks, 'Morning or afternoon?' The man in the agency says, 'We're talking about 10 years from now. What difference does it make?' He replies, 'The plumber is coming in the morning.'

Reagan could go on in this vein for hours. What is striking, however, is that his jokes were not about the evil of communism so much as they were about its incompetence. Reagan agreed with the hawks that the Soviet experiment, which sought to transform human nature and create a 'new man,' was immoral. At the same time, he saw that it was also basically foolish. Reagan did not need a Ph.D. in economics to recognize that any economy based upon centralized planners dictating how much factories should produce, how much people should consume and how social rewards should be distributed was doomed to disastrous failure. For Reagan the Soviet Union was a'sick bear,' and the question was not whether it would collapse, but when.

Sick bears, however, can be very dangerous. They tend to lash out. What resources they cannot find at home, they seek elsewhere. Moreover, since we are not discussing animals but people, there is also the question of pride. The leaders of an internally weak empire are not likely to acquiesce to an erosion of their power. They typically turn to their primary source of strength: the military.

Appeasement, Reagan was convinced, would only increase the bear's appetite and invite further aggression. Thus he agreed with the anti-Communist strategy for dealing firmly with the Soviets. But he was more confident than most hawks in his belief that Americans were up to the challenge. 'We must realize,' he said in his first inaugural address, 'that…no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.' What was most visionary about Reagan's view was that it rejected the assumption of Soviet immutability. At a time when no one else could, Reagan dared to imagine a world in which the Communist regime in the Soviet Union did not exist.


It is one thing to envision this happy state, and quite another to bring it about. The Soviet bear was in a ravenous mood when Reagan entered the White House. In the 1970s the Soviets had made rapid advances in Asia, Africa and South America, culminating with the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Moreover, the Soviet Union had built the most formidable nuclear arsenal in the world. The Warsaw Pact also had overwhelming superiority over NATO in its conventional forces. Finally, Moscow had recently deployed a new generation of intermediate-range missiles, the giant SS-20s, targeted at European cities.

Reagan did not merely react to these alarming events; he developed a broad counteroffensive strategy. He initiated a $1.5 trillion military buildup, the largest in American peacetime history, which was aimed at drawing the Soviets into an arms race he was convinced they could not win. He was also determined to lead the Western alliance in deploying 108 Pershing II and 464 Tomahawk cruise missiles in Europe to counter the SS-20s. At the same time, Reagan did not eschew arms control negotiations. Indeed, he suggested that for the first time the two superpowers drastically reduce their nuclear stockpiles. If the Soviets would withdraw their SS-20s, the United States would not proceed with the Pershing and Tomahawk deployments. This was called the 'zero option.'

Then there was the Reagan Doctrine, which involved military and material support for indigenous resistance movements struggling to overthrow Soviet-sponsored tyrannies. The administration supported such guerrillas in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola and Nicaragua. In addition, it worked with the Vatican and the international wing of the AFL-CIO to keep alive the Polish trade union Solidarity, despite a ruthless crackdown by General Wojciech Jaruzelski's regime. In 1983, U.S. troops invaded Grenada, ousting the Marxist government and holding free elections. Finally, in March 1983 Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a new program to research and eventually deploy missile defenses that offered the promise, in Reagan's words, of 'making nuclear weapons obsolete.'

At every stage Reagan's counteroffensive strategy was denounced by the doves. The 'nuclear freeze' movement became a potent political force in the early 1980s by exploiting public fears that Reagan's military buildup was leading the world closer to nuclear war. Reagan's zero option was dismissed by Strobe Talbott, who said it was 'highly unrealistic' and offered 'more to score propaganda points…than to win concessions from the Soviets.' With the exception of support for the Afghan mujahedin, a cause that enjoyed bipartisan support, every other effort to aid anti-Communist rebels fighting to liberate their countries from Marxist, Soviet-backed regimes was resisted by doves in Congress and the media. SDI was denounced, in the words of The New York Times, as 'a projection of fantasy into policy.'

The Soviet Union was equally hostile to the Reagan counteroffensive, but its understanding of Reagan's objectives was far more perceptive than that of the doves. Commenting on the Reagan arms buildup, the Soviet journal Izvestiya protested, 'They want to impose on us an even more ruinous arms race.' General Secretary Yuri Andropov alleged that Reagan's missile defense program was 'a bid to disarm the Soviet Union.' The seasoned diplomat Andrei Gromyko charged that 'behind all this lies the clear calculation that the USSR will exhaust its material resources…and therefore will be forced to surrender.' These reactions are important because they establish the context for Mikhail Gorbachev's ascent to power in early 1985. Gorbachev was indeed a new breed of Soviet general secretary, utterly unlike any of his predecessors, but few have asked why he was appointed by the Old Guard. The main reason is that the Politburo had come to recognize the failure of past Soviet strategies.

The Soviet leadership, which initially dismissed Reagan's promise of rearmament as mere saber-rattling rhetoric, seems to have been stunned by the scale and pace of the Reagan military buildup. The Pershing and Tomahawk deployments were, to the Soviets, an unnerving demonstration of the unity and resolve of the Western alliance. Through the Reagan Doctrine, the United States had completely halted Soviet advances in the Third World — since Reagan assumed office, no more territory had fallen into Moscow's hands. Indeed, one small nation, Grenada, had moved back into the democratic camp. Thanks to Stinger missiles supplied by the United States, Afghanistan was rapidly becoming what the Soviets would themselves later call a 'bleeding wound.' Then there was Reagan's SDI program, which invited the Soviets into a new kind of arms race that they could scarcely afford, and one that they would probably lose. Clearly the Politburo saw that the momentum in the Cold War had dramatically shifted. After 1985, the Soviets seem to have decided to try something different.

It was Reagan, in other words, who seems to have been largely responsible for inducing a loss of nerve that caused Moscow to seek a new approach. Gorbachev's assignment was not merely to find a new way to deal with the country's economic problems but also to figure out how to cope with the empire's reversals abroad. For this reason, Ilya Zaslavsky, who served in the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies, said later that the true originator of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) was not Mikhail Gorbachev but Ronald Reagan.

Gorbachev was widely admired by Western intellectuals and pundits because the new Soviet leader was attempting to achieve the great 20th-century hope of the Western intelligentsia: communism with a human face! A socialism that worked! Yet as Gorbachev discovered, and the rest of us now know, it could not be done. The vices Gorbachev sought to eradicate from the system turned out to be essential features of the system. If Reagan was the Great Communicator, then Gorbachev turned out to be, as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it, the Grand Miscalculator. The hard-liners in the Kremlin who warned Gorbachev that his reforms would cause the entire system to blow up were right.

But Gorbachev had one redeeming quality: He was a decent and relatively open-minded fellow. Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader who came from the post-Stalin generation, the first to admit openly that the promises of Lenin were not being fulfilled. Reagan, like Margaret Thatcher, was quick to recognize that Gorbachev was different.

Even so, as they sat across the table in Geneva in November 1985, Reagan knew that Gorbachev would be a tough negotiator. Setting aside State Department briefing books full of diplomatic language, Reagan confronted Gorbachev directly. 'What you are doing in Afghanistan in burning villages and killing children,' he said. 'It's genocide, and you are the one who has to stop it.' At this point, according to aide Kenneth Adelman, who was present, Gorbachev looked at Reagan with a stunned expression, apparently because no one had talked to him this way before.


Reagan also threatened Gorbachev. 'We won't stand by and let you maintain weapon superiority over us,' he told him. 'We can agree to reduce arms, or we can continue the arms race, which I think you know you can't win.' The extent to which Gorbachev took Reagan's remarks to heart became obvious at the October 1986 Reykjavik summit. There Gorbachev astounded the arms control establishment in the West by accepting Reagan's zero option.

Yet Gorbachev had one condition, which he unveiled at the very end: The United States must agree not to deploy missile defenses. Reagan refused. The press immediately went on the attack. 'Reagan-Gorbachev Summit Talks Collapse as Deadlock on SDI Wipes Out Other Gains,' read the banner headline in The Washington Post. 'Sunk by Star Wars,' Time's cover declared. To Reagan, however, SDI was more than a bargaining chip; it was a moral issue. In a televised statement from Reykjavik he said, 'There was no way I could tell our people that their government would not protect them against nuclear destruction.' Polls showed that most Americans supported him.

Reykjavik, Margaret Thatcher said, was the turning point in the Cold War. Finally Gorbachev realized that he had a choice: Continue a no-win arms race, which would utterly cripple the Soviet economy, or give up the struggle for global hegemony, establish peaceful relations with the West, and work to enable the Soviet economy to become prosperous like the Western economies. After Reykjavik, Gorbachev seemed to have settled on this latter course.

In December 1987, Gorbachev abandoned his previous 'non-negotiable' demand that Reagan give up SDI and visited Washington, D.C., to sign the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. For the first time in history the two superpowers agreed to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons.

The hawks were suspicious from the outset. Gorbachev was a masterful chess player, they said; he might sacrifice a pawn, but only to gain an overall advantage. Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus even charged Reagan with 'fronting as a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda.' Yet these criticisms missed the larger current of events. Gorbachev wasn't sacrificing a pawn, he was giving up his bishops and his queen. The INF Treaty was in fact the first stage of Gorbachev's surrender in the Cold War.

Reagan knew that the Cold War was over when Gorbachev came to Washington. Gorbachev was a media celebrity in the United States, and the crowds cheered when he jumped out of his limousine and shook hands with people on the street. Reagan was out of the limelight, and it didn't seem to bother him. Asked by a reporter whether he felt overshadowed by Gorbachev, Reagan replied: 'I don't resent his popularity. Good Lord, I once co-starred with Errol Flynn.'

To appreciate Reagan's diplomatic acumen during this period, it is important to recall that he was pursuing his own distinctive course. Against the advice of the hawks, Reagan supported Gorbachev and his reforms. And when doves in the State Department implored Reagan to 'reward' Gorbachev with economic concessions and trade benefits for announcing that Soviet troops would pull out of Afghanistan, Reagan refused. He did not want to restore the health of the sick bear. Rather, Reagan's goal was, as Gorbachev himself once joked, to lead the Soviet Union to the edge of the abyss and then induce it to take 'one step forward.'

This was the significance of Reagan's trip to the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987, in which he demanded that Gorbachev prove that he was serious about openness by taking down the Berlin Wall. And in May 1988 Reagan stood beneath a giant white bust of Lenin at Moscow State University, where, in front of an audience of Russian students, he gave the most ringing defense of a free society ever offered in the Soviet Union. At the U.S. ambassador's residence, he assured a group of dissidents and 'refuseniks' that the day of freedom was near. All of these measures were calibrated to force Gorbachev's hand.

First Gorbachev agreed to deep unilateral cuts in Soviet armed forces in Europe. Starting in May 1988, Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan, the first time the Soviets had voluntarily withdrawn from a puppet regime. Before long, Soviet and satellite troops were pulling out of Angola, Ethiopia and Cambodia. The race toward freedom began in Eastern Europe, and the Berlin Wall was indeed torn down.

During this period of ferment, Gorbachev's great achievement, for which he will be credited by history, was to abstain from the use of force. Force had been the response of his predecessors to popular uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. By now not only were Gorbachev and his team permitting the empire to disintegrate, but they even adopted Reagan's way of talking. In October 1989, Soviet foreign ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov announced that the Soviet Union would not intervene in the internal affairs of Eastern Bloc nations. 'The Brezhnev Doctrine is dead,' Gerasimov said. When reporters asked him what would take its place, he replied, 'You know the Frank Sinatra song 'My Way'? Hungary and Poland are doing it their way. We now have the Sinatra Doctrine.' The Gipper could not have said it better himself.

Finally the revolution made its way into the Soviet Union. Gorbachev, who had completely lost control of events, found himself ousted from power. The Soviet Union voted to abolish itself. Leningrad changed its name back to St. Petersburg. Republics such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine gained their independence.

Even some who had previously been skeptical of Reagan were forced to admit that his policies had been thoroughly vindicated. Reagan's old nemesis, Henry Kissinger, observed that while it was George H.W. Bush who presided over the final disintegration of the Soviet empire, 'it was Ronald Reagan's presidency which marked the turning point.'

We are now living in a new world, in which Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism may be replacing Soviet communism as the main challenge facing America and the West. Even as we face our new challenges, however, we should reserve a measure of admiration and gratitude for Reagan, the grand old warrior who led the United States to victory in the Cold War.

Gallup: Obama Approval Hits New Low on Deficit:

February 9, 2011

President Barack Obama’s approval rating for his handling of the federal deficit has fallen to a new low — just 27 percent of Americans now approve, down from 32 percent in November, while 68 percent disapprove, a Gallup poll reveals.

Back in April 2009, 49 percent of those polled said they approved of Obama’s handling of the deficit.

The new Gallup poll discloses that Americans feel Obama is doing much better on international issues than on domestic ones.

The poll was conducted Feb. 2-5, as the Obama administration was seeking to deal with the turmoil in Egypt. Nearly half of respondents, 47 percent, said they approve of Obama’s handling of the turmoil in Egypt, while 32 percent disapprove and 21 percent have no opinion.

On Afghanistan, 47 percent approve of his handling of the situation, and 46 percent disapprove.

Regarding Obama’s energy policy, 43 percent approve, and 42 percent disapprove. But 54 percent disapprove of his performance regarding taxes, while 42 percent approve.

Obama also scores poorly on two other domestic issues: healthcare policy (Americans disapprove 56 percent to 40 percent), and the economy (60 percent to 37 percent).

Republicans give Obama particularly low marks for his handling of domestic issues. Just 12 percent approve of the president on healthcare policy, 9 percent approve of Obama on the economy, and 7 percent think he is doing a good job with the deficit.

Among Democrats, they give Obama the highest rating for his handling of foreign affairs (75 percent), and healthcare policy (73 percent).
Republicans (34 percent) and Independents (47 percent) both give him their highest approval rating for his handling of the situation in Afghanistan.

“President Obama has failed to build public support in recent months for his handling of major U.S. economic matters,” Gallup observes.

“His approval rating on the economy is no better than it was last fall, and his approval rating on the federal budget deficit — a top issue for Republicans in Congress since the midterm elections — is even worse. His broadest support on the issues comes on foreign policy matters, most notably the situation in Egypt, but even on these, his approval ratings register just below 50 percent.”

Scandal? What Scandal? (Washington Post, 10/11/87).
Bush's Iran-Contra appointees are barely a story
Throughout the summer of 2001, the media were profligate with resources for the Chandra Levy story, excavating every corner of her and Rep. Gary Condit's past to unearth a prurient bounty of personal detail. That level of investigative vigor mighthave exposed far more vital information had it been applied to Bush's appointment of numerous Iran-Contra veterans to key posts.

But with a few admirable exceptions, news stories about Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte and Otto Reich have largely relied on past reporting and he-said, she-said soundbites by the usual supporters and critics, rather than in-depth investigations into their complicity in one of the bloodiest scandals of the past 20 years. And their guilt is based not on speculation or gossip, but on hard evidence that they aided torturers and death squads,circumvented Congress and the Constitution, and deceived the American people.

John Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85, covered up human rights abuses by the CIA-trained Battalion 316. He is Bush's choice for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and, as Extra! went to press, was expected to clear Senate confirmation hearings.

Elliott Abrams, an assistant secretary of state under Reagan, pleaded guilty in 1991 to two counts of withholding evidence from Congress (i.e., lying) over his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Bush I pardoned him; Bush II has appointed him to the National SecurityCouncil as director of its office for democracy, human rights and international operations. The post requires no Senate approval.

Otto Reich's nomination as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, the top post for Latin America, was predicted to draw the most congressional fire. Reich was head of the now-defunct Office for Public Diplomacy (OPD), which the House Committee on Foreign Affairs censured for "prohibited, covert propaganda activities"

"The republicans in reagan era were more moderate and not the extreme right like in office today" - Peter

Republicans are extreme right today? I could not disagree with you more. Clinton balanced the budget then Republican Bush and Democrat Obama created enormous debt. Rand Paul proposes 500 billion in cuts and the other Republicans balk, like it's too much. When Reagan took office the debt was 700 Billion, now it's almost 10 trillion! It's totally irresponsible to continue spending money we don't have and heading down this road without constraint. Obama's plan of freezing the debt is like driving straight after we made the wrong left turn. It's too little, too late. We must first turn right then drive straight, to get back on the correct path.

The so called far right extremist Rand Paul has this to say:

"My spending cuts would keep 85% of government funding and not touch Social Security or Medicare. After Republicans swept into office in 1994, Bill Clinton famously said in his State of the Union address that the era of big government was over. Nearly $10 trillion of federal debt later, the era of big government is at its zenith."

Reaganomics Created 21 Million Jobs:

February 11, 2011

Art Laffer, the economist and adviser to President Ronald Reagan, says the ultimate lesson of Reaganomics was that the right policies can create jobs — exactly what the economy needs now. Amid stagflation, high unemployment, and an oil shock, Reagan took the highly criticized position that tax cuts were the answer. He slashed the top income tax rate to 50 percent from 70 percent and the lowest rate to 11 percent from 14 percent.

Simultaneously, Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker embarked on a tight-money policy designed to rein in inflation, moving the inflation rate from a staggering 13.5 percent in 1981 down to 3.2 percent just two years later.

“What the Reagan Revolution did was to move America toward lower, flatter tax rates, sound money, freer trade, and less regulation,” Laffer writes in The Wall Street Journal. “The key to Reaganomics was to change people's behavior with respect to working, investing, and producing.”

Ronald Reagan
Eventually, the higher tax rate on non-wage income (like investments) fell to 28 percent from 70 percent. Corporate tax rates fell, too.

“Changing tax rates changed behavior, and changed behavior affected tax revenues. Reagan understood that lowering tax rates led to static revenue losses,” Laffer writes. “But he also understood that lowering tax rates also increased taxable income, whether by increasing output or by causing less use of tax shelters and less tax cheating.”

The result: 21 million jobs created between December 1982 and June 1990, Laffer writes.

“The true lesson to be learned from the Reagan presidency is that good economics isn't Republican or Democrat, right-wing or left-wing, liberal or conservative. It's simply good economics,” Laffer writes.

In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, President Barack Obama said he wants to cut the top corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent but also close “loopholes” enjoyed by many industries to keep the cuts “revenue neutral.”

"You know how it goes: because of various loopholes and carve-outs that have built up over the years, some industries pay an average rate that is four or five times higher than others. Companies are taxed heavily for making investments with equity; yet the tax code actually pays companies to invest using leverage," Obama told a chamber audience.

"As a result, too many businesses end up making decisions based on what their tax director says instead of what their engineer designs or what their factory produces. This puts our entire economy at a disadvantage. That's why I want to lower the corporate rate and eliminate these loopholes to pay for it, so that it doesn't add a dime to our deficit. And I am asking for your help in this fight," he said.

Bush Has Highest Disapproval Rating in History of Gallup Poll
Meanwhile, President Bush has set a new record. He now has the highest disapproval rating of any president in the seventy-year history of the Gallup Poll. In the most recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, 69 percent of Americans disapproved of Bush’s job performance. The previous record was held by Harry Truman, who had a 67 percent disapproval rate in 1952. Bush also holds the record for having the highest approval rating of any president in Gallup’s history. In September 2001, in the days after the 9/11 attacks, Bush’s approval spiked to 90 percent.

===================

Bush's disapproval rating worst of any president in 70 years
WASHINGTON — President Bush has set a record he'd presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll.
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt. http://tinyurl.com/5bwryk
The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.
Bush's rating has worsened amid "collapsing optimism about the economy," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies presidential approval. Record gas prices and a wave of home foreclosures have fueled voter angst. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080422/a_pollbox22.art.htm

"Bush Has Highest Disapproval Rating in History of Gallup Poll"

Caspian how soon thing change...from April 2008 to present day (see below)
---------------------------------------
Poll - 46 Percent Say 'Bring Back Bush!'

Public Policy Polling has some interesting and, for some, sobering numbers. It seems that 48 percent of those polled would like to keep Barack Obama in the White
House. However, 46 percent would really like to bring George W. Bush back.

The results would seem to be in the margin of error. They lend numbers to the growing sense of agreement in the viral Internet image that became a well known billboard, "Miss Me Yet?" Considering President George W. Bush's abysmal poll numbers during the last year or so of his presidency, the Public Policy Polling numbers are remarkable.

How does one explain how who some used to consider "the worst president ever" suddenly come to tie with a President who has been compared by some to be the Messiah?

The answer can be summed up in one word: anxiety.

By anxiety, we mean that not only do we live in anxious times under President Obama, but there is the growing belief that President Obama is not up to the job. More importantly, the Tea Party protests are filled with hundreds of thousands of people who have concluded that the President of the United States means the country harm, inadvertently of course.

Not so President Bush. The most anxious day in the living memory of many people was September 11th, 2001. President Bush quickly became a pillar of strength. The day he stood on the rubble of the World Trade Center, the elderly fire fighter at his side, and thundered that "Soon they will hear from all of us!" was the day that many people believe that George W. Bush became president in fact as well as by law.

Bush's subsequent hammering of the terrorists in Afghanistan proved that the man from Texas meant business. Things only began to go south when the Iraq War began to grind on too long. But even there subsequent events have proven Bush right. The Surge Campaign has all but swept the terrorists from the field, proving that Iraq was not, after all, Vietnam.

Obama/Bush Nearly Divided:
Rush Limbaugh recently articulated another reason why a growing number of people would like George W. Bush back in the White House in place of Obama. George W. Bush, opined El Rushbo, was not busily trying to take our
money and our freedom. He was not enacting policies, like health care reform, that could kill people.

And, one might add, George W. Bush wanted to explore the high frontier of space. Obama would put an end to such overweening ambition.

Caspian how soon thing change...from April 2008 to present day (see below)

==============

Bill, your rewriting history again.

Bush is so unpopular that he is not out campaigning and raising money for Republicans in 2010 and 2012.

This speaks volumes.

Your other article was written by Elliott Abrams who was one of the architects of Regime Change in Iraq back in the 1990s.



====================

Scooter Libby Took The Blame To Cover Bush, Cheney, Rove And The Leo Strauss Agenda: The Jig Is Up !
June 3, 1997 / http://tinyurl.com/6c3l
American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.
We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.

Elliott Abrams- Gary Bauer- William J. Bennett -Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney -Eliot A. Cohen- Midge Decter- Paula Dobriansky -Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg -Francis Fukuyama -Frank Gaffney -Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan- Zalmay Khalilzad -I. Lewis Libby -Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle -Peter W. Rodman -Stephen P. Rosen -Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld -Vin Weber -George Weigel -Paul Wolfowitz

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm


===============

A Way to Oust Saddam
Robert Kagan
Weekly Standard
September 28, 1998
http://tinyurl.com/hgq2p
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-092898.htm


-------------------

Doug Feith Cooked The Books For Bush
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/allison.mp3

"Bush Has Highest Disapproval Rating in History of Gallup Poll"

Still another Caspian lie!
----------------------------------------
April 11, 2008

Bush Job Approval at 28%, Lowest of His Administration:

Only Nixon and Truman have had lower job approval ratings...... (and Jimmy Carter tied see below)

PRINCETON, NJ -- President George W. Bush's job approval rating has dropped to 28%, the lowest of his administration. Bush's approval is lower than that of any president since World War II, with the exceptions of Jimmy Carter (who had a low point of 28% in 1979), and Richard Nixon and Harry Truman, who suffered ratings in the low- to mid-20% range in the last years of their administrations.

"Bush is so unpopular that he is not out campaigning and raising money for Republicans in 2010 and 2012."

There you go again with Caspian's fantasy ride.Everyone knows that was Bush's personal choice to bow out of politics and not criticize the opposition party, he's a much more principled ex-president and human than you'd ever care to recognize. I'm not surprised, as Progressives have conclusively demonstrated that they are sore losers to the Nth degree. In the end Bush beat you all! In fact, with the outright rejection of Progressive and Democratic left policies by the majority of America in the last two years, I'd say Bush in on the rise just as the new polls say. The taste of socialism in this administration scared America straight!

The taste of socialism in this administration scared America straight!

===============

That is because of corrupt corporate Mainstream media ....


.... and corrupt corporate Rightwing media.

Truth be told Obama and his policies are not liberal.

PROOF PROOF and more PROOF!

---------------------

Neil Cavuto discusses Massachusetts Health Care Law with Mitt Romney
Obama implemented Republican Health Care.
http://tinyurl.com/yf653xt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h__s18YXcMs

Republicans Say Everything the Dems Pass Is Unconstitutional--Even Policies They've Championed for Decades
January 28, 2011 / http://tinyurl.com/5r8ro94
That Republicans are relentlessly attacking the constitutionality of what had long been one of their signature ideas for reforming the health-care system--the individual mandate requiring people to buy insurance or pay a penalty-- is a testament to just how far down the rabbit-hole our discourse has gone.
Late last year, when a federal judge ruled against the mandate (two other courts disagreed, and the Supreme Court will end up deciding the question), Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, rejoiced. "Today is a great day for liberty," he said. "Congress must obey the Constitution rather than make it up as we go along." It was an odd testament to freedom, given that Hatch himself co-sponsored a health-care reform bill built around an individual mandate in the late 1990s.
Journalist Steve Benen noted that while "the record here may be inconvenient for the right ... it's also unambiguous: the mandate Republicans currently hate was their idea."
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149705/republicans_say_everything_the_dems_pass_is_unconstitutional__even_policies_theyve_championed_for_decades

Republicans Spurn Once-Favored Health Mandate
February 15, 2010 / http://tinyurl.com/yds8m6n
For Republicans, the idea of requiring every American to have health insurance is one of the most abhorrent provisions of the Democrats' health overhaul bills.
"Congress has never crossed the line between regulating what people choose to do and ordering them to do it," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). "The difference between regulating and requiring is liberty."
But Hatch's opposition is ironic, or some would say, politically motivated. The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it.
In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time." / http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123670612

"Truth be told Obama and his policies are not liberal"

Just about as liberal and left as the American people can stand witout turning this country into another Egypt, and revolting in the streets.
When will you Socialist-Progressives finally get it???

Cheney's victory:
January 21, 2011

It detains almost 200 people at Guantanamo Bay, the facility that Amnesty International calls "a global symbol for injustice and abuse."

It will resort to military tribunals for those detainees it chooses to try. Dozens of the rest will simply be held indefinitely -- international opinion be damned.

It relies on Gen. David Petraeus to turn around a difficult war of counterinsurgency. He's "an extraordinary warrior for the American people," it insists.

It surges American troops into the field, disregarding American public opinion and the opposition of the left. It persists even though the war has been dragging on for years in a country beset by ethnic divisions, a long history of war and repression, and weak, corrupt political leadership.

It warns that this is "tough business" and "progress goes slow," but is stalwart nonetheless: We are "going on offense" in a war that is part of a global effort "to disrupt and dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies."

It refuses to heed the protests of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.

It fails to forge a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, or even stop the Israelis from building settlements.

It is not talking to North Korea or Iran.

It believes it has the right to kidnap people in the tactic known as "rendition," without due process.

It targets people for assassination, without due process.

It rains missiles down on countries, Pakistan and Yemen, with which we aren't at war and profess to be friendly.

It reserves the right to assassinate American citizens, and has targeted one US citizen for killing in Yemen. He's a Muslim religious leader not indicted for any crimes, let alone convicted of any.

It embraces the Patriot Act and its repeated reauthorization without hesitation. It ignores critics of the law like former Amnesty International USA chair Chip Pitts, who warns of "the institutionalization of this and other egregious infringements on freedom."

It relies on the National Security Agency for a sweeping program of terrorist surveillance and brushes aside all legal challenges to it.

It bristles at congressional interference with, as the attorney general puts it, "the authority of the executive branch to determine when or where to prosecute terror suspects."

It is prone to what advocates of government transparency criticize as the overclassification of government documents.

It won't tolerate unauthorized leaks, prosecuting a host of whistle-blowers.

It invokes the "state secrets doctrine" to get court cases it finds inconvenient dismissed, including one by former US detainees alleging abuse.

It issues signing statements challenging parts of laws passed by Congress, in a practice that lawmakers of both parties have criticized and the American Bar Association calls unconstitutional.

It outrages civil libertarians. They denounce it for "making impunity for torture the law of the land" (the ACLU). They inveigh against it for asserting that "the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws" (Electronic Frontier Foundation). They lament its policies for their "repressiveness" (Glenn Greenwald of Salon).

While it is attacked by the left for its robust assertions of executive power in a global War on Terror, it is defended by Dick Cheney for the same.

It advocates democracy and human rights in sweeping terms: "Societies are more harmonious, nations are more successful and the world is more just when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being."

It prods the Arab world to reform, issuing a blunt warning that its "foundations are sinking into the sand." And it lectures China for violating the rights of its people.

It flatly boasts that we are "the greatest nation on Earth."

But enough about the Obama administration.
----------------------------------------

Like it or not Obama had no choice......claiming he would close Gitmo never made any sense in the real world.

When will you Socialist-Progressives finally get it???
------------------

I just proved to you that Obama implemented a Republican health care plan and not liberal health care.

Liberals got ZERO from Obama.

No Single Payer "Medicare For All".

No Public Option lower cost for medicines and health care.

No bailouts for home foreclosures.

No Glass/Steagall.

Obama is doing what Bush and Cheney did bailing out Wall Street and not Main Street.
=============

Obama’s Reprehensible Rhetoric Against Single-Payer
March 3, 2010 / http://tinyurl.com/yhnbrom
When Barack Obama gave his “this is it” speech on health care reform on March 3, he once again swerved out of his way to hit advocates of a single-payer system.
He said: “On one end of the spectrum, there are some who have suggested scrapping our system of private insurance and replacing it with government-run health care. Though many other countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical nor realistic.”
You can argue about whether it is realistic politically but there should be no question whatsoever that it’s practical in the sense of being functional. It works well in other countries, including Canada, and there is no reason it can’t work well here. Canada’s health outcomes, and the health outcomes of every other advanced industrial country with government-run systems, are superior to ours.
http://www.progressive.org/wx0303b10.html

Caspian, Bill F, I would like to add additional thought to this endless debate.

A Republican vs Liberal health care bill is not the same as a Conservative vs Liberal health care bill.

In my view, Conservative economic ideals are less government and more individual freedoms. Liberal seem to want bigger government with less individual choice. The only issue that is contrary to this way of thinking is the issue of abortion.

When it comes to Republican and Democrat policies, there is always flip flopping and lies but an ideal is different. So the idea of mandated purchase of health insurance, whether proposed by even Reagan, is in my view, a Liberal idea.

"So the idea of mandated purchase of health insurance, whether proposed by even Reagan, is in my view, a Liberal idea."

I agree but you are being too kind, since I believe its more of an outrageous socialistic idea, not just a liberal one.

What is so wrong with our tax dollars paying the Military, Police, and Firefighters all across America?

What is wrong with Medicare for our Senior citizens?

What is wrong with Social Security when you retire?

Mike G. Bill F. and Caspian already pay anyway.

So why not implement Single Payer into the Medicare program.

Why must our taxpayer dollars go to the wealthy who don't need help.

Tax Shelters? Loopholes? Outsourcing? Subsidies?

Tax cuts for the wealthiest 0.1% that did not work for the last 8 years of Bush/Cheney.

Yet the Tea Bags and the corporate Republicans forced Obama to continue them costing 700 Million more to our deficits.

Why must our tax dollars bailout Wall Street and not Main Street?

A POX ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES!
====================

Government Bailouts: A U.S. Tradition Dating to Hamilton
SEPTEMBER 20, 2008 / http://tinyurl.com/ygk788s
The bubble pops. Lenders freeze. Depositors lose faith. Panic spreads. And the government steps in because nobody else will.
Today it is Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke putting together the rescue package for a financial system rocked by falling home prices and a wave of defaults on subprime mortgages.
But a short walk through U.S. history demonstrates the point made by Alex J. Pollock of the American Enterprise Institute: "If you would like an empirical law of government behavior, it is that in a panic or threatened financial collapse, governments intervene -- every government, every party, every country, every time."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122186662036058787.html

Caspian, some answers to your questions:

What is so wrong with our tax dollars paying the Military, Police, and Firefighters all across America?

There is nothing wrong Federal tax dollars for the military, State tax dollars for the Police and firefighters.

What is wrong with Medicare for our Senior citizens?

Nothing is wrong with that at all. Actually it is not really an entitlement we PAY for it ourselves through deductions from our wages.

What is wrong with Social Security when you retire?

Same answer as Medicare. As long as the handlers of OUR money are responsible, then it is like a retirement plan but if they are not responsible then we should not be FORCED to give them our money to invest.

So why not implement Single Payer into the Medicare program?

It gives government too much power and control over our lives. If they are in charge of all our medical, then they will be telling us how to live our lives. It will be costly, since everyone, not just the Seniors will be covered. We will be mandated to pay into, not just money taken from our wages. The managers would need to be trustworthy and efficient with the money we invest in single payer. A 10 trillion dollar deficit tells me they are not good with protecting our money.

Why must our taxpayer dollars go to the wealthy who don't need help?

Freedom. Rich or poor individuals should be able to spend their money as they wish or donate where they wish and not be forced to have government redistribute where they wish.

Tax Shelters? Loopholes? Outsourcing? Subsidies?

The playing field must be fair, with equal opportunity for individuals to advance on their own, without having to rely on government. Flaws or abuses in the system must be corrected. It is the role of government to assure everyone has equal opportunity, to punish the abuser and reward the law biding. Yet outsourcing, tax shelters, loopholes, subsides are legal and supported by government. Should make you wonder who you should be trusting.

Yet outsourcing, tax shelters, loopholes, subsides are legal and supported by government. Should make you wonder who you should be trusting.
Mike G.

-------------

I agree with your post and that is why I don't understand why our government cannot give "US" the benefits just like they do with corporate welfare.

Trillions for war profiteers and both parties don't say a word about it.

----------------

Michele Bachmann: Welfare Queen
Dec 22, 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/ydrlen7
Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.
And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.
Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/michelle_bachman_welfare_queen_20091221/

Ow wow. The money for nothing crowd always astounds me.

The military is paid for by vested -owners- of the federal tax system.

Cops and firemen are primarily paid for by -owners- of state and local property tax.

Most buininess's -owners- especially small buisness do in fact pay state, local and federal income tax.

Medicare: Most receivers of medicare, about 89% have paid into the system for a lifetime, an average 40 years. They've banked about $50-60,000 in the system. They are -owners- of the system.

Hopefully you all probably know that once one starts to receive social security benefits and medicare one must still pay a premium to receive Medicare benefits. The premiums increase with gap coverage and drug coverage. It aint free. On top of everything youve paid for a lifetime it still cost a few hundred a month.

Caspian wants medicare for everybody???A young family of 4 that hasnt paid into the system will still have to pay $2000 a month plus, minimal for medicare coverage. Please Caspian, there is no free lunch....unless of course you are a very large corporation.

The difference between corporations and you Caspian is corporations produce...on a grand scale. Its trickle down economics at its finest. The sum meaning the corporation dosent get taxed that much, but the parts- the workers get taxed. The workers pay for cops and firemen. The workers pay for the military. The workers pay the property and state tax. The workers pay sales tax. ect ect ect.

Except of course Haliburton and General Motors to name a few, that only has a 20% American workforce.

"I agree with your post and that is why I don't understand why our government cannot give "US" the benefits just like they do with corporate welfare. Trillions for war profiteers and both parties don't say a word about it." - Caspain

I always understood your position that you don't like the way government is spending our money but I never understood why it is you still look toward them to change. It is a sort of a rebate mentality where you think if we pay into the government, we expect they will redistribute it back to us but it never quite works out to our advantage, does it? Fred make's some excellent points that Medicare is NOT something government is giving to us, as well as pointing out why government GIVES to corporations.

So my point is, if we keep more of our money, limited government, lower taxes WE give OURSELVES the benefit, rather then wait for government to give it to us. Don't get me wrong we need government programs, if they are responsible and efficient and if they can do as good or better a job then the private sector. However, a bigger and bigger government without accountability does not put money where it is needed most. A limited efficient government that allows us to keep more of our money makes the most sense I think, for everybody.

I'e never understood why cetain segments of our society think that they are ENTITLED to share in the fruits of someone elses labor.

A correct redistribution of taxes would entitle the elimination of income and property tax. If everyone was subject to a state/local/federal vat user/sales tax, similar to the added tax on gasoline-tobbaco-alcohol it would be a much greatly improved system.

Actually, I'd much prefer a flat tax over a consumption tax. A percentage flat tax seems the most fair. Those making less, pay less and those making more pay more.

However, with a vat tax alone both rich and poor pay exactly the same for a product but it rewards the wealthy property owners and those with the highest income over the poor that make less and don't own property.

I know this is going to sound Q ish but I think the rich should pay more and the poor pay less but no able body person should get a free ride.

The difference between corporations and you Caspian is corporations produce...on a grand scale. Its trickle down economics at its finest. fred.

==================

Down sizing, outsourcing, and stealing employee's pensions does not sound like producing too me.

==================

The Rich Get Richer, and They Have You to Thank, Says David Cay Johnston / Nov 19, 2010 / http://tinyurl.com/2bwz8xm
The rich, thanks to government handouts, are getting richer at everyone else's expense. At least that's what David Cay Johnston claims in the book Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)
"This enormous growth of incomes at the top is not the result of market forces -- there's some market forces -- but it's largely the result of all these rules nobody knows about," he tells Dan and Aaron in this clip.
The problem starts with government subsidies, says Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. States are spending around $70 billion on government subsidies, he estimates. That doesn't include the hundreds of billions more doled out in federal subsidies.
"Is that capitalism?," he complains. "Go compete in a competitive arena. Don't go to Washington and say 'give me money' either by saying 'I don't have to pay taxes' or forcing other people to pay taxes that go to me. Go earn your money in the marketplace."
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-rich-get-richer-and-they-have-you-to-thank-says-david-cay-johnston-535635.html?tickers=brk-b,gs,brk-a,xlf,wmt,tgt,cab

So my point is, if we keep more of our money, limited government, lower taxes WE give OURSELVES the benefit, rather then wait for government to give it to us. Mike G.

----------------

I agree with your goals but when has the government ever materialized that position?

In the 1950s the wealthiest had to pay 91% in taxes.

The lowest taxes in all of American history was 8 years of Bush/Cheney and that only produced one million or two jobs.

---------------------

Back to the 1880s
This is not the first time that America has looked as if it was about to succumb to what might be termed the British temptation. America witnessed a similar widening of the income gap in the Gilded Age. It also witnessed the formation of a British-style ruling class. The robber barons of the late 19th century sent their children to private boarding schools and made sure that they married the daughters of the old elite, preferably from across the Atlantic. Politics fell into the hands of the members of a limited circle—so much so that the Senate was known as the millionaires' club.
Yet the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a concerted attempt to prevent America from degenerating into a class-based society. Progressive politicians improved state education. Philanthropists—many of them the robber barons reborn in new guise—tried to provide ladders to help the lads-o'-parts (Andrew Carnegie poured millions into free libraries). Such reforms were motivated partly out of a desire to do good works and partly out of a real fear of the implications of class-based society. Teddy Roosevelt advocated an inheritance tax because he thought that huge inherited fortunes would ruin the character of the republic. James Conant, the president of Harvard in 1933-53, advocated radical educational reform—particularly the transformation of his own university into a meritocracy—in order to prevent America from producing an aristocracy.

===============

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich- and Cheat Everyone Else
http://tinyurl.com/ydf6r6 / April 18, 2004
One of the country's top investigative reporters reveals how the richest people within the top 1 percent of the country has rigged the tax code and other laws in its favor.
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Cay Johnston has been breaking pieces of this story on the front page of The New York Times for nine years, work for which one business school professor calls him ìthe de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United Statesî. With Perfectly Legal, he puts the whole shocking narrative together in a way that will stir up media attention and make readers angry about the state of our country. And he has sound advice on what to do.
http://www.booknotes.org/Program/?ProgramID=1776

Down sizing, outsourcing, and stealing employee's pensions does not sound like producing too me-caspian

General Motors

Reagan was a dream for those of like mind and make up,and a nightmare for those who weren't.

Cases in point **Iran-Contra**,**The Cocaine Epidemic**

Union Sundown
Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore,
My flashlight's from Taiwan,
My tablecloth's from Malaysia,
My belt buckle's from the Amazon.
You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines
And the car I drive is a Chevrolet,
It was put together down in Argentina
By a guy makin' thirty cents a day.

Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, this silk dress is from Hong Kong
And the pearls are from Japan.
Well, the dog collar's from India
And the flower pot's from Pakistan.
All the furniture, it says "Made in Brazil"
Where a woman, she slaved for sure
Bringin' home thirty cents a day to a family of twelve,
You know, that's a lot of money to her.

Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, you know, lots of people complainin' that there is no work.
I say, "Why you say that for
When nothin' you got is U.S.-made?"
They don't make nothin' here no more,
You know, capitalism is above the law.
It say, "It don't count 'less it sells."
When it costs too much to build it at home
You just build it cheaper someplace else.

Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, the job that you used to have,
They gave it to somebody down in El Salvador.
The unions are big business, friend,
And they're goin' out like a dinosaur.
They used to grow food in Kansas
Now they want to grow it on the moon and eat it raw.
I can see the day coming when even your home garden
Is gonna be against the law.

Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Democracy don't rule the world,
You'd better get that in your head.
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that's better left unsaid.
From Broadway to the Milky Way,
That's a lot of territory indeed
And a man's gonna do what he has to do
When he's got a hungry mouth to feed.

Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Copyright ©1983
http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/union-sundown

Oliver North Questioned - Rex 84 Exposed During Iran Contra

THE IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR / 1 9 8 3 - 1 9 8 8
http://tinyurl.com/3g9xnd
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/irancontra/irancon.html

I remember him as a RACIST.
I remember him as trading with terrorist. ( The Iran-Contra Scandal)
I remember him as clearly suffering from Alzheimer's pretty early on.
I remember watching Nancy Reagaon running the country.
I remember him firing the airplane pilots.
I remember him creating automatic jail term bids primarily aimed at African Americans while his VP. ( George Bush SR.) gave Freeway Ricky Ross tons of Cocain via a CIA front company.

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