Tag Archives | Ronald Reagan

Former Guatemalan Dictator Convicted Of Genocide

By on May 13, 2013 in News 0

guatemalan dictator

The military dictatorship led by Montt slaughtered thousands upon thousands of villagers in an effort to exterminate Guatemala’s indigenous ethnic Mayan population, which it regarded as sympathetic to leftist rebels. No word on whether the CIA and Ronald Reagan will be tried posthumously as accessories. Reuters reports:

Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt was found guilty on Friday of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 80 years in prison. It was the first time a former head of state had been found guilty of genocide in his or her own country.

Montt, now 86, took power after a coup in 1982 and implemented a scorched-earth policy in which troops massacred thousands of indigenous villagers thought to be helping leftist rebels.

Prosecutors say Montt turned a blind eye as soldiers used rape, torture and arson to try to rid Guatemala of leftist rebels during his 1982-1983 rule, the most violent period of a 1960-1996 civil war in which as many as 250,000 people died.

… Read the rest

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Thatcher And Kissinger United Again: One Died, The Other’s Documents Were Dumped

By on April 8, 2013 in News 0

Reagan ThatcherThe past fired back today–with two barrels.

Margaret Thatcher’s death at age 87 ushered in a non-stop sycophantic display of adulation across all the television networks, that, we need to recall, used the same playbook when her ideological kith and kin, Ronald Reagan, also suffering from dementia, departed this mortal coil

Then, there was a six-day televised praise poem between his death and what amounted to a state funeral with an unending orgy of uncritical commentary,  as if the media had fallen down the amnesia hole and forgotten that the great communicator was not that good a communicator and often an embarrassment, not to mention a political fraud.

Now it’s Maggie’s turn, with acres of sound bites stressing that “we should never forget” how tough the “Iron Lady” was.  Baroness “Lady Thatcher” was spoken of reverentially as royalty by the high and mighty who treated her as a divine figure.

In life her role was debated; in death, she was consecrated as a goddess.… Read the rest

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The Left Doesn’t Need a Rand and the Right Shouldn’t Want Another Reagan

By on August 27, 2012 in News 5

Picture: Wikimedia Commons (CC)

Jeff Madrick, (Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow, Director of the Rediscovering Government initiative and author of Age of Greed), has typed a scathing indictment of those glossy false icons on the right, while at the same time warning against blind hero worship and succumbing to demagoguery on the left. We know that the philosophies of historical figures like Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand turned out to be toxic, even to those in the lower classes who still idolize them, but Madrick argues that their memories have been obfuscated by myth.

via The Next New Deal:

The right then goes on to mythologize and entirely distort the Reagan years. Under Reagan in the 1980s, wages stopped growing, productivity grew at historically slow rates, investment was soft, and the deficit never came down to the levels promised. That deficit was an albatross around the neck of George H.W.

… Read the rest

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Auction House Claims It’s Selling a Vial of Ronald Reagan’s Blood

By on May 22, 2012 in News 6

Ronald ReaganPerhaps in a future post-apocalyptic America, this will be a holy relic. Remember ask yourself, “WWRD”? As Greogory Katz reports in the Associated Press:

A Channel Islands auction house says it’s selling a vial that allegedly contains blood residue from Ronald Reagan — a move denounced Tuesday by the late U.S. president’s family and his foundation.

The vial being auctioned online was used by the laboratory that tested Reagan’s blood when he was hospitalized after a 1981 assassination attempt in Washington, the PFCAuctions house said.

Reagan’s son Michael condemned the auction but said he was confident it was not his father’s blood.

“Whatever’s in the vial — could be mouse blood — it’s certainly not Reagan blood,” Reagan said in a telephone call from Los Angeles. “And what an outrageous thing to do to (Reagan’s widow) Nancy and the family. I hope the world calls on this organization to cease and desist because it’s so bogus.”…

Read More: Associated Press… Read the rest

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States of Depression

By on April 12, 2012 in News 9

Reagan HopeHere’s an article from Paul Krugman in the New York Times about the state of the economy, and this quote pretty much sums up his verdict: “In fact, if it weren’t for this destructive fiscal austerity, our unemployment rate would almost certainly be lower now than it was at a comparable stage of the ‘Morning in America’ recovery during the Reagan era.”

Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, is about as “liberal” (whatever the hell that means in 2012) as the korporate media will allow at this point. He has often been highly critical of Barack Obama, especially during the 2008 Democratic Party race, when he was one of the few to note Obama’s economic policies were already in campaign mode decidedly to the right of both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

That said, Krugman provides the following evidence:

One way to dramatize just how severe our de facto austerity has been is to compare government employment and spending during the Obama-era economic expansion, which began in June 2009, with their tracks during the Reagan-era expansion, which began in November 1982.

… Read the rest

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J’Accuse: Where Is MY Rocket-Powered Jet Pack, Mr. Gingrich?!!!

By on January 31, 2012 in News 11

elroyWell, haven’t we all been treated to quite the show lately?  Of course I’m talking about the debates for the Republican Party’s primary in Florida, which have degenerated into an unseemly picking over the corpse of Reagan-era optimism, each candidate trying to prize from Zombie Ronnie’s rigor mortised grasp the famed Talisman of Americana.  Shameful and disgusting.

The mind readily grasps the allure of laying claim to the mantle of the august Uncle Dutch (i.e., being the only legitimate basis of rule, the “One Meme to Rule Them All”).  Therefore it is hardly surprising that its power should attract the devious lust of unsavory creatures from beneath even the dankest rocks in the even the darkest corners of America’s mushroom garden.  That is merely natural and expected, actually a necessary function of narrative causality, being all the better to highlight by means of contrast the enlightened munificence and nobility of the True Heir of the king who single-handedly defeated the corrosive and perverse troglodytes of The Evil Empire.… Read the rest

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Was John Lennon A Closet Republican?

By on July 2, 2011 in News 55
John Lennon

Photo: Roy Kerwood (CC)

Via the Toronto Sun:

John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death — according to the tragic Beatles star’s last personal assistant.

Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon’s death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.

In new documentary Beatles Stories, Seaman tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky Lennon wasn’t the peace-loving militant fans thought he was while he was his assistant.

He says, “John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.

“He’d met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event… Reagan was the guy who had ordered the National Guard, I believe, to go after the young (peace) demonstrators in Berkeley, so I think that John maybe forgot about that … He did express support for Reagan, which shocked me.

… Read the rest

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Ronald Reagan Could Be Added To Mt. Rushmore

By on February 7, 2011 in News 45
Photo: TK (Fred J. Eckert/Ambassador Eckert Images)

Photo: TK (Fred J. Eckert/Ambassador Eckert Images)

It might just be a neocon’s wet dream today, but if Sarah Palin is elected President of the United States next year, I’d say the odds suddenly change in favor of adding Reagan’s ugly mug to Rushmore … ABC News reports on a serious campaign to make it happen:

Ask the most passionate admirers of former President Ronald Reagan to rate the greatness of his legacy, and they’ll likely put him in the company of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt.

While Congress debated and ultimately rejected that idea in 1999, the concept still tickles conservatives, who see the question — should Reagan be on Rushmore? — as an entree to discussing the former president’s clout.

“Is he of that stature? The answer is yes,” said Grover Norquist, chairman of the Reagan Legacy Project. “Reagan was the most successful president of the twentieth century. He took a country that was in economic collapse and militarily in retreat around the globe and turned it completely around.”

Norquist, who led the effort to rename Washington’s National Airport after Reagan, has been using the president’s centennial anniversary to make a renewed push to bring the Reagan name and likeness to every county in all 50 states.

… Read the rest

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Sarah Palin On The Road To Ruin

By on February 5, 2011 in News 20

Sarah PalinRonnie Reagan wannabe Sarah Palin is shrieking for attention again. The New York Times is giving it to her … and so are we (sorry, but her repugnancy is of the highest order):

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Sarah Palin opened a celebration of Ronald Reagan this weekend by declaring that the United States was lurching toward a “road to ruin,” saying the nation had become so weighed down by debt and excess government that a new direction was urgently needed in Washington.

She did not, however, provide any clues as to whether she would join the Republican primaries and seek to challenge President Obama or simply continue to offer commentary from the sidelines.

For Ms. Palin, a speech here Friday evening at the Reagan Ranch Center offered an opportunity to connect herself to the most iconic figure of the Republican Party. She used the appearance — one of the highest-profile Republican platforms in months — to rally conservatives by drawing parallels between government expansion under President Lyndon B.

… Read the rest

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