What will they name for Reagan next?

Things NOT to say aloud while standing in line to view Reagan's casket:

"I thought we weren't supposed to see flag draped coffins."

"Mommy, why is Daddy crying like a little pu**y?"
"He was your Daddy's idol, son."

"Who let Hinckley in here?"

"Tell me again, what do I win if I guess the number of jellybeans in there?"

"That's not Ted Williams!"

"No ma'am, you can't park your Cadillac there and they aren't handing out welfare checks anyway..."

"No Merv, you can't take the body and put it in the lobby of one of your casinos; I don't care what the note from Nancy says."

"Are they distributing free cheese on the way out?"

"Kinda weird how George Gipp died of pneumonia too, huh?"

"Where's Nancy, in the Lincoln Bedroom again?"

Speaking of tear gas, talk about a thread in need of some.

since the SDI was his idea, the energy beam was to be named the

RONALD RAYGUN

It misses unless it has a predefined target

Reagan
Reagan's best asset was his personality; he was a likeable guy. As governor and president, he did enormous damage to California and to America. The Reagan myth machine has done a great job of concealing the damage, but eventually, historians will out him and his administration.

Television has changed the reasons people vote for presidents. Nothing will improve until American citizens stop electing presidents because they are likeable and start concentrating on their agenda and what they stand for.

BBB

Amen.

If we continue down the road we are on right now - history will be controlled also :sad:

More things only to be whispered on line:

"I'm an air traffic controller, and I approve this message."

"Bedtime for Bonzo..."

"No, that was my favorite movie of his. Really..."

"He had more embalming fluid in his hair at that SOTU in '86..."

"Remember in 'Brother Rat' where he smacked that woman across the face? They said it took 17 takes, but only because he was enjoying himself so much..."

Big Three Anchors Fear Media Will Overdo Reagan Coverage
DUH! The Media's attempt to elevate Ronald Reagan to sainthood is so blindly stupid and doing a disservice to the public. Enough is enough!
---BBB

Big Three Anchors Fear Media Will Overdo Reagan Coverage.
June 08, 2004, 14:26:00 EDT

Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw are all afraid that television is going to talk too much about deceased president Ronald Reagan and the preparations for his funeral.

"They will be over-covered," Rather told Philly Daily News TV critic Gail Shister. "Even though everybody is respectful and wants to pay homage to the president, life does go on. There is other news, like the reality of Iraq. It got very short shrift this weekend."

"Once the herd starts moving in one direction, it's very hard to turn it, even slightly. Nationally, the herd has grown tremendously."

Brokaw and Jennings agreed that television will overdo the coverage but disagreed with Rather on whether reports should mention negative things about the departed president. The CBS star said he thought that was inappropriate.

"When a twice-elected, two-full-term president dies, it's not the time for a seminar on his strengths and weaknesses, in my opinion," he told the columnist. "To paraphase Marc Antony, I think, by and large, that the good that men do should live after them, and the evil should be interred with their bones."

Interesting to say the least. We find it ironic that these three, especially Rather, would complain about television "over-covering" something considering they are the most powerful men in their respective news divisions. Where was this attitude during the media frenzy over Abu Ghraib? Earlier in May, CBS ran 28 stories, almost one a day, on the scandal.

UPDATE: CNN anchor Aaron Brown thinks he and his colleagues are not going overboard.

"Part of the reason we exist is to be a place where you can come, not just for information, but to be a part of these major moments in our lives," he writes in an online newsletter for his show, News Night.

"In these moments, when you want to reflect on a major event, when you want to be part of the larger community sharing this moment, a common moment, we should be there. This isn't Laci or OJ. This is news and history, and while I understand why people who have TV's on all day get sick of it, most people don't have TV's on all day and don't get sick of it. It is a service, and it is the right service for us to provide."

There is a new move under foot:

The United States of Reagan

Re: Big Three Anchors Fear Media Will Overdo Reagan Coverage


It's nice to hear something else beside the Peterson and Nichols trials and Iraq for a change.

The u-turn that saved the Gipper
The u-turn that saved the Gipper

After Iran-contra, Reagan ditched the right and embraced Gorbachev

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday June 10, 2004
The Guardian

Ronald Reagan's presidency collapsed at the precise moment on November 25 1986 when he appeared without notice in the White House briefing room, introduced his attorney general, Edwin Meese, and instantly departed from the stage. Meese announced that funds raised by members of the national security council and others by selling arms to Iran had been used to aid the Nicaraguan contras. Anti-terrorism laws and congressional resolutions had been wilfully violated. Eventually 11 people were convicted of felonies. In less than a week, Reagan's approval rating plunged from 67% to 46%, the greatest and quickest decline ever for a president.

On December 17 1986, William Casey, the director of the CIA, was scheduled to testify before the Senate intelligence committee. But he collapsed into a coma, suffering from brain cancer, never to recover. Lt Col Oliver North, Casey's action officer on the NSC, explained to a select congressional investigation that Casey had been the mastermind in creating an "overseas entity ... self-financing, independent", that would conduct "US foreign policy" as a "stand-alone". Called "the Enterprise", it was the apotheosis of the Reagan doctrine, the waging of a global war for the rollback of communism.

The hardline secretary of defence, Caspar Weinberger, and his neoconservative underlings were summarily dismissed, the NSC purged. "Let Reagan be Reagan," had long been the cry of conservatives. Now they screamed that Reagan was either being held prisoner or had sold out.

In interviews with investigators, Reagan said he couldn't recall what had happened. But he retained his utopianism and idealism that had propelled him from leftwing liberal in Hollywood to rightwing man on horseback, switching ideologies but never his temperament.

At his first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, Reagan had perplexed him by talking about how they might work together if there were an invasion of aliens from outer space. Reagan had got his idea from a 1951 science fiction movie in which an alien warns of earth's destruction if nuclear weapons are not abolished.

At the Reykjavik summit in October 1986, Reagan had agreed to eliminate all nuclear weapons (to the consternation of his advisers) until Gorbachev insisted that testing for the Star Wars missile defence shield be suspended. Two of Reagan's utopian dreams collided. But after the exposure of the Iran-contra scandal, Gorbachev dropped the objection to Star Wars. Instead, he crafted a practical arms reduction agreement, the intermediate nuclear forces treaty. And, despite opposition from conservatives, Reagan seized upon it.

With script in hand, Reagan was Reagan again. In September 1987, he addressed the United Nations general assembly: "I occasionally think how our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world." That December, Gorbachev came to the White House to sign the treaty. Then, in June 1988, Reagan went to Moscow, where he declared that "of course" the cold war was over and that his famous reference to the "evil empire" was from "another time."

Reagan did not bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union. But he lent support to the liberalising reform that hastened the end. In reaching out to Gorbachev, Reagan blithely discarded the rightwing faith that totalitarian communism was unchangeable and that only rollback, not containment and negotiation, would lead to its demise.

Reagan was acutely self-conscious about his about-face and on his trip to Moscow he explained it. "In the movie business actors often get what we call typecast," he said. "Well, politics is a little like that too. So I've had a lot of time and reason to think about my role."

Reagan's embrace of Gorbachev rescued his own political standing. His rise in popularity to the mid-50s was essential in lifting his vice-president's presidential ambition, for the elder Bush was moon to Reagan's sun. Yet Bush distanced himself, adopting the "realist" view that Reagan suffered from "euphoria" and that nothing fundamental in the world was changing.

Now, George W Bush eulogises Reagan as his example. Bush has his own doctrine, a Manichean battle with evildoers, and an army of neoconservatives to lend complex rationalisations to his simplifications. Yet Reagan was saved by the wholesale firing of the neoconservatives, the rejection of conservative dogma and a deliberate strategy to transcend his old typecasting. It is why he rose above his ruin, and rides, even in death, into the sunset of a happy Hollywood ending.
--------------------------------

· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and Washington bureau chief of Salon.com

I bet Carnegie Deli names a sandwhich for Reagan.

"Where's The Beef"

"I Forgot The Bread"

"What's A Sandwich"

It will be a hot sandwich, ironically filled with cold cuts, served with jelly bellies on the side.

Yeah, old Ronnie could always see the fifth side to every argument.

BumbleBeeBoogie



What an outlandish idea