Rivals Blast Obama's Praise for Reagan

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8...;show_article=1

<span style="font-size:18pt;line-height:100%">Rivals Blast Obama's Praise for Reagan
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Jan 18 05:12 PM US/Eastern
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer

RENO, Nev. (AP) - John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Barack Obama's praise of the Republican Party and Ronald Reagan—an anathema for many Democrats, particularly union members considered crucial to winning Nevada's Democratic caucuses Saturday. Obama responded by suggesting Clinton would be a "president whose plans change with the politics of the moment"—one of his most direct critiques of the New York senator yet.

The intensity reflects what polls suggest could be a tight contest Saturday as Nevada plays its most prominent role ever in a presidential nominating campaign. Nevada was granted a coveted spot right after Iowa and New Hampshire in an attempt to bring more racial and geographic diversity into the selection.

The novelty means there isn't a reliable way to determine who is likely to turn out at caucuses across the state. In addition, nine caucuses are to be held in casinos for the first time to allow shift workers to participate on a busy holiday weekend—making the result even more unpredictable.

Obama got a boost when he won the endorsement of the Culinary Workers Union that represents 60,000 housekeepers, bartenders, waiters and other employees on the Las Vegas Strip. Then a judge dismissed an attempt to eliminate the casino caucus sites. But Clinton still holds an edge in most polls.

Edwards, his chances for the presidency diminished by losses to Obama in Iowa and Clinton in New Hampshire, did not run television ads in the state and did not plan to stay in Nevada to wait for results. His schedule Friday had him leaving to campaign in Oklahoma, Missouri and Georgia, among the more than 20 states that vote on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

Edwards questioned Obama's commitment to labor in his final appeal to Nevada voters—a rally with about 100 of his precinct captains in Las Vegas.

"Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans against middle class and working families, ... we know that Ronald Reagan is not an example of change for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party," Edwards said.

Reagan also "was destructive to the environment by removing a lot of the regulation that existed," Edwards added in a later telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change."

Obama told the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board Monday that "Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it," Obama said.

"I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom," Obama told the newspaper.

On Friday in Las Vegas, Clinton, responded, "That's not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years." She said she didn't consider it a better idea to privatize Social Security, eliminate the minimum wage, undercut health benefits, shut down the government or drive the country into debt. "I think we know what needs to be done in America. And I think we're ready to do it. I'm ready to lead on day one."

Obama questioned her claim while campaigning at the University of Nevada Reno. "Senator Clinton has said she is ready to lead from day one, but it's important on day one to get it right, whether you're talking about war or you're talking about economic proposals."

Obama said Clinton recently joined his call for a tax rebate. When she initially announced her economic stimulus plan last week, she said she would consider a tax rebate in the future if the economy worsened.

"This is a larger point that has to be made," he said. "It is easy to be for policies that help working families when it's popular on the campaign trail, but the American people don't want a president whose plans change with the politics of the moment."

___

Associated Press writers Kathleen Hennessey and Beth Fouhy in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

 

This is reaching across the aisle in a big way. It's not the normal "anything the other party every did is wrong" rhetoric.

Reagan was president of a union, the screen actor's guild. You don't think he knew union politics and what unions are about?

Reagan did fire air traffic control workers who illegally (yes, it's against the law for them to) who went on strike. So that was him busting a union. He was enforcing the law, period.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (L @ Jan 18 2008, 02:30 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Denny, Im curious, what are your political views?</div>

I've been working on my blog pretty regular. The first post or second talks about my political views...

Basically, I consider myself to be about as liberal as they come. Liberal in the true sense of the word - on both social issues and economic ones.

A word about Conservatism. It's a philosophy based upon three principles (a tripod, so to speak): anti-communism, libertarianism, and traditionalism. That Reagan was anti-communist is hardly a shock.

A bit of history, which is a good blog entry for me to do later on... In WW II, Stalinist Russia became our allies. Reagan and other hollywood types were recruited by FDR to do propaganda films, and it became important to promote Soviet Russia as good. Hollywood made numerous films about how great the USSR was and how great life was for its citizens and that kind of thing. Then the war ended and we were basically at cold war with the Russians. And Hollywood forgot to stop making those propaganda films. They still are

That's a big part of the source of the McCarthy hearings into hollywood.

 

LOL

When Reagan became president, the fear was that the USSR and it's 10M man standing army would march through West Germany in a few minutes and take over the place. Oh wait, that IS the story that was told in the movie you mention.

Of course, you can spin it any way you want, but Reagan turned out to be quite the diplomat, and the massive reduction in nuclear arsenal world-wide was started with his dealing with Gorby. Remember Jimmy Carter's gaffe during a debate in 1980? See here:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/5172.html

Four years later, defending the White House, it was Carter?€™s turn to commit a gaffe. In his sole debate with Ronald Reagan, Carter cited his 12-year-old daughter, Amy, as evidence of the national concern with nuclear proliferation. He had some notion that this might humanize the issue, and he was still competing with a Republican who some thought might be a risk on national security?€”or, as Reagan put it to me that June, ?€œI have to convince people I?€™m not some combination of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Mad Bomber.?€?

That Carter had made a serious mistake became apparent in the 36 hours after the debate when I encountered voters in both Philadelphia and Tampa making the same jokes about Amy and the bomb.</div>

Regardless of the gaffe, the concern with nuclear proliferation was the #1 priority for both candidates and the nation back then, and Reagan actually did something about it. Real and tangible.

Note: Turns out the CIA was just as wrong about the state of the USSR at the time as it was about WMDs in Iraq.

Reagan was governor of California. The Internet was a DARPA project he fueled with big spending. The computer industry that was burgeoning first did so under his leadership as Governor and then as president. You can't possibly deny that when he brought in his gang of managers from the State govt. to run the federal govt. that they didn't understand what was going on in their home state. Not to mention the military $$$ that went into the space program (shuttle) and all the spinoffs we got from that (like demand for faster, lighter/smaller CPUs).

The economy did really well? That's soft-pedaling it, too. The nation did a 180 from the course it was on under just 4 years of one party rule (Carter + democrats in congress) plus 8 more of the same from JFK+LBJ (that's 12 of the 20 years from 1960 until 1980).

25M new jobs were added, and that is a lot of women who joined the workforce at nearly the same time. Remember the ERA? (look it up if you don't know about it). Well, it failed, Reagan appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court, and millions and millions of women sought independence and took jobs.

Deficits? The govt. revenues DOUBLED. He asked for a line item veto and balanced budget amendment. Congress declared his budgets DOA and spent what they wanted. But sure, it was his fault. He had plenty of vetoes in those fights, too. Who really spent more than 2x gain in revenues? Who has the power of the purse in govt.?

On a statistical level, more people left the lowest quintile of earners for the 4th quintile, the 4th to the 3rd, etc., than under any other president. And it was MORE true for non-white people. Go figure. The fastest growing job fields were medical, computers, and other quality high paying/career-oriented type jobs. Compare to Clinton's terms when those fastest growing fields were food service, janitorial, and other minimum wage type jobs.

The course we were on before him was toward 3rd world nation status. Literally. The economy wasn't just "bad" under Carter, it was horrible and spiraling out of control. 30 year T-Bills sold during the Carter administration are just now expiring and paid near 20% interest.

Yeah, yeah, it was great for the people, too. People didn't have much equity in their homes because nobody wanted to pay high prices/appreciation AND 19% mortgage rates. I bought my first house in 1982, and the interest rate on the mortgage at offer time was 18 7/8. Literally. In the 90 days it took to close, the rate dropped to 12 7/8, saving us $450/month in mortgage payments. Screw tax cuts, they don't add up to that kind of money ($450 x 12 months). I wasn't a rich guy or anything, just 21, just married, newborn baby, earning $16K/year.

Gasoline was cheap, if you didn't mind waiting in line for 2 hours at the gas station and if your license plate ended in an odd number on Tuesdays. And if you had a job.

Reagan had nothing to do with reducing effectiveness of the FDA. His EPA Secy. was a bozo, true. Nothing like Clinton's people who nearly let our top research facilities burn down with massive forest fires.

AIDS? Democrats rag on him like he had anal sex with gays and gave it to them. The reality is that the govt. spent HUGE amounts of money on research. Ever increasing amounts, each year. More than we spent on trying to cure cancer and heart disease combined (the two biggest killers, disease-wise). Federal Spending on Health increased by 121% in the 8 years of Reagan I and II.

War on Govt.? Good for him! It was one of the most impressive things. On the other hand, you found my gripe against him. He talked a good game, and it incentivised people to do great things with their lives. The FEDERAL government spent $591B in 1980, and $1.25T in 1988 - it doubled in size. Some war that must have been.

If you like Social Security, you have to give him credit for saving it from doom in 1983.

Things were much better under Clinton. I'm not so sure. Our entire trade deficit in GHW Bush's last year was $80B. Clinton's last year, it was $800B. Hear that sucking sound? The Clinton economy was built on hot air - dot bomb companies with multi-billion dollar valuations and $40M in sales and $40M in losses. While he was out there talking about the "economy is in the sweet spot," fed chairman Greenspan was talking about "irrational exhuberence." Didn't matter much, though, because we got a balanced budget out of taxing the elderly and peoples' net worth (not income - you pay tax on gains in stock sales and mutual fund gains, but you can't write off losses the next year against that income). Clinton left office with the nation in recession, millions losing their high quality tech jobs when the bubble burst, and people with 2nd loans on their homes to pay their taxes that last year. Sweet!

Too bad no democrat or republican in my lifetime was even close. JFK might have been, but didn't serve very long or accomplish much. He was quite similar to Reagan in many ways, though.

 

You have to compare presidents with one another, especially recent ones and ones of the same period. You talk about the USSR, but it's meaningless in the context of 40 years of cold war and the policies of the presidents during that time. Detente (Nixon/Ford) and the Cuban Missile Crisis are hugely relevant to what happened to the USSR (it flourished during those times).

As I pointed out before, the USSR had that 10M man army, which was expensive. Reagan's military spending forced them to spend 65% of their GDP on their military, which broke their backs. Considering the succession of leaders in the USSR before Gorby, you might say that they chose him to sue for peace with Reagan.

It is knee-jerk reaction to criticize Reagan out of context!

The "Reagan was a boob" kind of talk was pure propaganda and outright lies. Reagan is credited with giving 50 of the 200 greatest speeches in history. They were and still are a thing of beauty to read on paper, so it wasn't just his charisma that made them great. If Reagan had speech writers creating those words, they all retired when he did, because you won't find similar writing or speeches made by anyone after he retired. And, it is ignorant of the actual scholarly historian research into him:



Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
A top advisor to Ronald Reagan once remarked of his boss: "He knows so little and accomplishes so much." Reagan, in His Own Hand will show that the 40th president knew far more than some people have given him credit for. It collects Reagan's recently discovered writings from the late 1970s, when he delivered more than a thousand radio addresses. He wrote about two-thirds of these himself, in longhand on yellow legal paper. "In writing these daily essays on almost every national policy issue during the 1970s, Reagan was acting as a one-man think tank," suggest the editors. This edition reproduces everything faithfully, right down to the spelling mistakes and crossed-out words. And it offers a compelling look at the ideas and principles that animated one of the most important Americans of the 20th century. In one address, Reagan describes his contribution to a time capsule:

I wrote of the problems we face here in 1976--The choice we face between continuing the policies of the last 40 yrs. that have led to bigger & bigger govt, less & less liberty, redistribution of earnings through confiscatory taxation or trying to get back on the original course set for us by the Founding Fathers.... On the international scene two great superpowers face each other with nuclear missiles at the ready--poised to bring Armageddon to the world.

Often his rhetoric is admirably forthright: "Calling a communist a liar when he is one is pretty frustrating. How do you insult a pig by calling it a pig?.... Fidel Castro is a liar." And there are frequent glimpses of his later achievements, such as the foreshadowing of his desire to build the Strategic Defense Initiative: "If the Soviets should push the button our magnificent warning system would immediately detect the launch of their missiles.... But there is no defense against them--no way to prevent nuclear devastation of their targets here in the U.S."

The bulk of the book comprises these radio addresses, but a concluding section includes everything from a short story Reagan wrote as a school assignment when he was 14 (it earned him a B+) to his memorable letter in 1994 revealing his Alzheimer's disease. This book will enthrall Reagan's devotees, and even his toughest critics will concede he had a way with words. No wonder they called him "The Great Communicator." --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly
Ronald Reagan is a puzzle: How, many wonder (and as Shultz puts it in his foreword), could he know so little and accomplish so much? The editors of this volume (two former Reagan advisers [Anderson and Anderson] and a historian [Skinner]) believe the question can be answered through Reagan's own writings. Associates describe Reagan as constantly writing, whether at home or in a hotel room, in a car or on a plane, recording his thoughts on the issues of the day. The product was almost always some form of public address, written and edited by hand. A collection of these manuscripts is presented here, just as Reagan wrote them, including his corrections and notes. With a few exceptions, they are very short radio commentaries delivered during the pre-presidential period (1975-1979), focusing mostly on foreign policy and the economy, and framed in terms of the general issue of government and freedom. There are no surprises; whether one sees Reagan as the great communicator, articulating deeply held convictions through the expression of simple but profound truths, or as the not-too-bright actor, painting a complex world in the reductionistic tones of black and white, one's expectations will be confirmed. In foreign policy Reagan is the essential Cold Warrior, understanding the world in terms of an "ideological struggle" between Communism and the proponents of freedom. In domestic policy he is the committed capitalist, always suspicious of government regulation and critical of taxation, and not above propagating theories of Communist conspiracy. Indeed, the uniformity of his outlook is quite remarkable, and whether one considers this a strength or a weakness this volume drives home the single-mindedness of the former president. (Feb. 6)Forecast: Given Reagan's enduring popularity, this could find a broad market, and a five-city author tour may pique readers' interest. Primarily, however, the book will appeal to serious students of history trying to put Reagan's ideas and ideology in historical context. First serial to the New York Times Magazine.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

 

A great example of his libertarian rhetoric:

"I wrote of the problems we face here in 1976--The choice we face between continuing the policies of the last 40 yrs. that have led to bigger & bigger govt, less & less liberty, redistribution of earnings through confiscatory taxation or trying to get back on the original course set for us by the Founding Fathers.... On the international scene two great superpowers face each other with nuclear missiles at the ready--poised to bring Armageddon to the world."

And yeah, the war on drugs was a black mark on his legacy. He's not beyond criticism, far from it. If you are going to criticize him, I suggest it be an argument that has merit.

 

While I'm not a big fan of the war on drugs, there is merit to it.

The argument for it is that the state has a compelling interest in seeing that some big % of its workforce and people aren't addicted to drugs.

 

Exxon Valdez.

http://outside.away.com/magazine/1097/9710captain.html

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>...But as has been shown, alcohol had nothing to do with the grounding.

Other things did, though, and Hazelwood knows them by heart: the Vessel Traffic Service watchstanders, charged with monitoring the vessel's progress through the sound, who failed to spot the missed turn and who later tested positive for marijuana and alcohol...</div>

My own view is that drug abuse is a medical problem and should be treated as such. Rehabilitation and education works better than criminalization. Public education about tobacco effects has drastically reduced the number of smokers, after all.

I just point out that there is a real compelling state interest, when something like the Exxon Valdez accident affected so many people and the environment.

 

Drug tests are a terrible infringement of personal liberty, IMO. Not once you're arrested, tho