And then there's Ronnie Reagan from ronn.org:
Ronald "Shotgun Wedding" Reagan
A study in cognitive dissonance
All links were good when this was originally written, in October of 2003.
The question isn't so much why dittoheads like Ronald Reagan, the question is why do they love him so slavishly?
Ronald Reagan had major character flaws: Our only divorced president (on the grounds of "mental cruelty"), forced to marry a pregnant Nancy in a shotgun wedding, was greatly influenced by astrology in events, senility by 1983, surrounded by corruption and incompetence and found guilty of "failing to meet presidential obligations" (bottom of link), and investigated for being a Communist in 1947.
Ronald Reagan was not a good president: Campaigned for 16 years, since his Goldwater acceptance speech and won in 1980 on a balanced budget platform, yet the first thing he did was massively increase the deficit, and for wholly political reasons said his Budget Director. This is the biggest flip-flop in US political history, and it drove conservatives crazy. The corruption in his SAG term of office was reflected in massive corruption in his presidential terms (some attribution here and here and... Indeed, it's worse than reported, going so far as to terrorize church officials for their politics and having the CIA illegally infiltrate church sanctuaries. He didn't defeat "communism". The Soviet Union was less than a quarter the number of people that remain under communist regimes. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was a major victory for the people in Russia and the repressed states, but Reagan's sabre-rattling kept it alive several years after it was obviously dead. Star Wars not the reason: There was no increase in the Soviet Union's military spending in response to Reagan's build-up. He screwed up at Reykjavik, proposing a deal to completely eliminate US and Soviet nukes, then backing off when it looked like Gorby would accept. Credit should go to Carter for setting exactly the right policy with a selected arms build-up, in Afghanistan, and with Solidarity. As we've seen since, the Soviet Union wasn't much of an empire and most of the people in it aren't particularly evil. Perhaps if he hadn't fired the air traffic controllers, there would have been more experienced people who would raise the alarm faster on 9/11.
The Obama campaign took a measured response to the incident, contending in a statement that Obama has spoken for many years about parental responsibility as well as "jobs, justice and opportunity for all."
"He will continue to speak out about our responsibilities to ourselves and each other, and he of course accepts Rev. Jackson's apology," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows a steady race with Barack Obama attracting 45% of the vote while John McCain earns 41%. When "leaners" are included, Obama leads 48% to 44%
Foxfyre wrote:
Ah... how recently it was still that we were supposed to believe that Obama was suspiciously radical, an extreme liberal, harboring socialist ideas...
