Bring back Reagan and/or a less sleazy version of Bill Clinton.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Seattle, Aug 1, 2019.

  1. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    I think we are going to have another Presidential election where no one feels there are any good choices in either party.

    If anyone runs again Trump, that would be a better choice of course. I'm not excited about Biden or Bernie and they seem to be the front runners. They're not exactly going to energize the base.

    Reagan came along at the right time and got deregulation started and lowered taxed (needed then, not now). Clinton didn't hurt anything and was President during good economic times.

    Reagan wasn't the sharpest dude, Clinton was. Reagan was good on monetary and fiscal policies. His social policies left a lot to be desired.

    I just don't see anyone now who is worried about anything other than getting elected.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    There are a couple of decent choices in the Dem Party - not hard to find, either.
    The famous eyesight of the American "conservative" - it makes things appear and disappear at will.
    Consult a lefty or liberal, why not. They've been basically right for forty years now - the odds of them being right again are pretty good.
    Reagan's tenure in office was disastrous, as even a cursory overview of the basic economic stats for the US economy will verify. Look at the graphs of economic trends in the US - almost all of them have break points, inflections or even reversals of slope, starting in the eighties and continuing in basic trend to yesterday.
    Reagan's economic policies were an idiotic mess, folly on stilts, and the current degradation of what had been a country gaining in prosperity and well-being dates to his election.
     
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  5. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I see that you are just repeating the Democratic Party Propaganda. Reagan followed the Iran mess, the oil cartel problems which lead to the highest inflation/interest rates in my lifetime all of which has only come down since his years in office, along with lower taxes.

    A trip out of the country before Reagan was a trip of a lifetime. Now it is a regular occurrence. The controllers union went on an illegal strike saying that they were understaffed and not paid enough and that the situation was dangerous for flying passenger.

    Reagan fired all those who went on strike, none were ever rehired, they trained new people and the skies are as safe as ever.

    The turn for the worse came with Newt Gingrich and the "Contract with America" and later during the Dan Quayle "Family Values" period.

    Clinton benefited from the economy. Bush 1 wasn't re-elected largely due to the economy but Clinton didn't do anything any differently. It just recovered as they usually do and that was to his benefit. To his credit, he didn't mess things up by making business the enemy as Democrats often did in those days.

    This was in part due to the "3rd way" gaining popularity in the UK.

    Deregulating and being firm with the unions was the best thing Reagan did. Being intelligent and not playing politics with the economy was the best thing Clinton did and he ended up with a budget surplus.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Nope.
    ? You do know that Reagan was elected in 1980, right?
    Reagan. Look it up.
    It took Clinton six years or more to curb the Reaganomic slide to disaster. And it proved a temporary achievement.
    Bullshit.
    He crashed the S&Ls, turned Wall Street loose on the accumulated wealth of a generation's prosperity, screwed up the collapse of the USSR by allowing predation, launched a crack cocaine epidemic in the US, and set in motion the accumulation of wealth by the rich that is now on the brink of destroying the middle class in America.
    By being firm with the unions he put them out of business - that and his tax policies started the import of unskilled labor and the offshoring of manufacturing. which is now unrecoverable

    He did a few things differently - especially, he blocked some of the crazy stuff. He delayed the disaster a few years. Meanwhile, the economy never did recover - the US is still in Reagan's Hole, economically.
    He fought the Republican economic agenda, played politics as hard as he could, and actually succeeded in forestalling some of it while sanitizing some of the rest;

    and was impeached by the Reagan Republicans, for his troubles.
     
  8. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    6,549
    I'm not American, nor either old enough to reflect on choices there, but I think I would've preferred, Nixon.
     
  9. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Tweedism
     
  10. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,883
    I'm not entirely certain that matters to him.

    Consider: Reagan is once again publicly outed as an awful person, and shortly thereafter an antisocial without a clue posts a clueless romanticization of the man.

    The counterpoint, of course, is that Trumpfans really are pining for the Eighties.

    It's like that part of the Fifties that runs into the Sixties; Twisted Sister covering the Shangri-Las, a 1964 song, or who remembers Sha Na Na, and there was American Graffiti, set in '62; all of this gets gathered up into an idea of the Fifties, which represented in the '80s a catch-all idea of pre-hippie American virtue.

    Like this myth of the American Fifties into the Sixties, the conservative generation in power is throwing back to misty memories of youth in the Eighties.

    Of course the aspiring troll looking to be more of an affliction than mere symptom turns up with this uneducated fetishizing of St. Ronald Magnus in the immediate wake of our latest reminder what an awful person Reagan was.

    With conservatives, it helps to remember the time Dave Thomas turned up on The Simpsons to do a Stack-as-Ness bit, and after Rex Banner's flight out of town, I think it was Mayor Quimby who deadpanned, "That was unexpected." Okay, maybe it doesn't help, but catapult or no, I keep hearing that line, over and over and over, when these utterly predictable rightist tropes pop up pretty much apropos of nothing save for familiar dubious pretenses.

    • • •​

    One ironic bit about that might also seem a bit obscure to you, but in our time of seemingly dynastic American politics, with institutionalists long successfully railing against institutions and fomenting cynicism toward even career bureaucrats, the architects of the Iraq War started under Nixon; Donald Rumsfeld was member of Congress before becoming an executive-branch fixture, but one of the important points of that government and political career spanning forty-three years in two blocs, is that he was Secretary of Defense twice, the first time under Ford in 1975; Cheney and Woflowitz were there, too. In what might seem a familiar move, these days, Rumsfeld had voted against the creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969, but the next year eventually accepted appointment as its Director; his tenures there and elsewhere, such as the Economic Stabilization Program, and Cost of Living Council, to which he was apparently appointed for being a ruthless bastard, went about as you might imagine. He became SecDef in 1975, under Ford, and also helped construct Team B, which, under Reagan, would serve primarily to undermine American intelligence agencies in order to support the administration's policies. By the time he oversees the Iraq War, with other Nixon hands, e.g., Wolfowitz, Perle, who were also part of Team B, they are essentially a cadre of career politicians who have sought to lead the U.S. into a massive war in the Middle East since Nixon's time, and they were around every Republican administration through Bush Jr. Some of their successors are in the Trump administration, which point probably warrants more consideration than the American discourse affords it.

    The irony arises because Republican anti-institutionalism elects its antithesis, and this actually seems to be the point, and so obviously that one of the reasons I use the hashtag #trumpswindle is to wonder if President Trump's supporters think themselves in on the grift. The alternative, of course, is that conservatives are just that gullible. The Nixon administration is an interesting benchmark; if Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, his Vice-President, eventually winning the Oval Office, himself, would play a pivotal role in entrenching what his former boss had cautioned against.

    (The common link, though, 'twixt Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Trump, as such, is white supremacism, so there is that. And it was in the Bush administrations, too, though not quite front and center; those were much more about the Nixon neocons and their Straussian warmongering, though the turmoil of paradigms in transition helped push that focus. Well, that, and it was Eisenhower's presidency that overthrew Mossadeq, installed Reza Shah, and spun up a cycle that, today, purports to justify much of the entrenched military-industrial complex.)​

    The Nixon administration is a very interesting nexus point in American history.
     
  11. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    Don't take everything so literally and you won't be so confused (or a least less confused). With that avatar maybe some confusion is always going to be a part of your life.

    Before deregulation it was much more expensive to fly and therefore the average person didn't travel by air nearly as much.

    Again, refer to your avatar and your hysterical, post William Buckley style of "writing" and then go and look in the mirror and you'll have your "anti-social, without a clue" frowning at you in that mirror.
    Do the "educated" now watch the "Simpsons"? Iceaura pines for the day, just prior to Reagan. That is when all was right with the world. That little bubble between WWII and the end of the 60's when all was right with the world. Unions were king, a man could support a family of 4 selling appliances at Sears.

     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2019
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    I see that you are buying the Democratic Party Propaganda.

    News flash, air travel was much more expensive before deregulation and the average person didn't travel by air (for pleasure) nearly as often.

    Clinton showed us that we can have a budget surplus in good times. We should try that again.

    Look at the size of the military budget under Reagan and look at it now. Reagan didn't destroy the unions. He didn't have that kind of power. Look at Trump, he can't do crap. What makes you think Reagan had that kind of power? You do realize that Reagan was elected in 1980. That was almost 40 years ago and he is the reason that unionism isn't popular today? Democratic Party Propaganda again. Try to learn to think for yourself.

    The unions destroyed themselves because it's not a good model. Businesses are best reacting to a free marketplace and governments are best providing basic services for everyone.

    You mention Econ 101, chapter 1. Let's be honest, you haven't had Econ 101.
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Nixon was the original Southern Strategy Republican - he began the the conversion of the white southern racists to the Republican Party. Before Nixon, the Democrats were the party of the Klan and the Baptist fundies. After Nixon, the Republicans were.

    He was also corrupt, financially and morally, and as President was attempting to use the FBI, IRS, and other such federal agencies, to persecute and harass and frame his political enemies.
     
  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    He was corrupt, I don't know about financially. At least he was intelligent. The Republican Party has certainly gone away from that model after the Nixon years (including Reagan).

    Reagan stood for something however. After Reagan they lost that as well.

    Democrats were always the better party but they didn't have any knowledge of business or economics and just went by their "feelings". That's their Achille's Heel. Of course today the Trump Republicans don't understand economics either and are all "feelings" as well, to the extent that they have any.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Nope.
    You have no idea what you are talking about, when you use such phrases: the Democratic Party does not have a propaganda operation, and if it did it would not match my posting here.
    So?
    Sure.
    And that took six solid years, battling the Republican "supply side" nutjobs all the way. The Republican Hole is much deeper now.
    But it isn't impossible - First step: impeach Trump, and open an investigation into the Republican Party leadership's international banking connections and foreign dealings generally.
    The unions did not destroy themselves. They were destroyed - remember your posting above, crediting Reagan? And the US economy has been tanking ever since.
    If you want a case study, take a look at the Ford plant in Saint Paul, or the Hormel plant in Austin, Mn.
    Corporations and their wealthy owners will destroy any free markets that get in their way, unless prevented from doing so by firm government regulation and heavy taxation. On the flip side, government can provide basic services (education, health care, sewer systems and waste disposasl, roads, legal infrastructure, mililtary defense, law enforcement) only by levying the necessary taxes on the wealthy.
    And another one bites the dust.
    They get so used to making stupid claims from ignorance, and getting away with it, they can't even see when they're told they are being set up.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Reagan stood for States Rights and lower taxes on the rich. Racial bigotry and corporate welfare. Ignorance based initiatives. Clandestine deals with hostile governments for domestic political advantage. Political campaigns focused on personal attacks and lying about physical reality.

    The Republican Party has continued that stance and that behavior ever since. Trump is a continuation of Reagan - same voting base, same issues, same policies, same approach to governing, even some of the same people.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2019
  17. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    Republicans want Biden instead of Trump
    the question is will they vote for the Democrats to put biden in instead of trump.

    i think the best would be AOC
    but looks like AHhhhhmereika is a long way away from being able to think of a female being the boss.
    the democrats who didnt vote for hilary were voting against having a female president.
    Republicans learnt their lesson with the alaskan wild moose face screaming over the fence at russians... as soon as the republican personality attack electioneering stratergy started, moose-face-fence-screamer didnt stand a chance ... even with a evil dirty hell spawn child that had been saved by baby cheeses to buy the conservative christian nutters
    thats the untold sad story of culturally ingrained misogyny and sexism

    is responsible for hundreds of /deaths via the cold war(not that east germany was a bikini beach sea side town swim holiday resort..)

    Alasken Screaming Moose Face with hell-spawn daughter with baby on a leash ...
    (republican ideology)
    he sold hard core lynching type public media whipping up people to act on TV
    i guess the republicans want to pretend he was an innocent sock puppet...
    which is probably why the Republitard electioneering machine targeted hollywood celebrity democratic funders to try and deny them free speech.

    sins of the father ..
    Republican voters and Republican Mainstream think politics is too dirty a business to be done by women.
    this is why they consider Democratic female politicians to be sluts and ho's

    hows that for a sad reality !
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2019
  18. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    "Damn you Sexy Bitch! Dont take away my lovin"!

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  19. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    You are misreading the American public (not totally of course). Hillary isn't a very likable personality. She was the much better choice than Trump but very few people actually like Hillary.

    There was no black President until Obama but Obama was a reasonable candidate and he was elected. Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton weren't reasonable candidates and of course they weren't elected.

    A likable competent woman can be elected here. It hasn't happened yet so you aren't totally wrong of course.
     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    You could say that with similar accuracy about any candidate for anything, ever.
    I've been fairly impressed by Warren.
     
  21. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    I know you think you are being clever, much as Tiassa thinks, but all the clowns in the clown car think that too. Clever by half is the saying I believe.

    Those in the traffic controller union who went on strike did so illegally. Reagan has busted no unions. They have busted themselves.

    Most corporations aren't owned by "the wealthy". They are owned by the shareholders and that includes pension funds, etc. Sure Gates and Bezos are doing well but your target is the "wealthy" when it should just be slightly higher taxes for corporations.

    Too high and you are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. That's the problem that bit the unions. Just because you say that Reagan killed the unions doesn't make that reality.

    You can't tax your way into prosperity. There is some inequality that could be addressed this way. The degree to which you are talking about is not the solution.

    Economics isn't your strong suit. Why pretend that it is?

    Where do you get your Democratic Party Propaganda talking points from? It's better to think for yourself.
     
  22. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    Why not just repost your Democratic Party Propaganda talking points from whatever source you are copying them from. Think for yourself.
     
  23. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    Sure you could say it given the class (politicians) as a whole but there have been candidates that had a well thought out, reasonable platform. That is not Trump and I don't see a lot of well thought out anything coming from the Democratic Party at the moment.
     

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