Ron Regan passes away at 93

[Blarneystoned]

Taps

Day is done.
Gone the Sun.
From the Lakes
From the Hills
From the Sky
All is well
Safely rest
God is Ni

 

[BlackSnake]

Re: Bye-Bye

I was going to try to say something meaningfull and perhaps profound...but you know what???...good riddance

You need a hug, don't you?

 

[Mhari]

Reagan was for sure not one of my favorite presidents, but I still feel very sad at his passing. Though I'm sure it is a relief to him to be beyond his suffering now.

~Mhari

 

[Belegon]

I may have disagreed with some of the man's politics but I never doubted that he meant well, tried hard and loved his family and his country.

I'll never forget the principal of my high school coming on the speaker system to say the president had been shot and that we were going to pray for him.

Mr. Reagan lived up to his nickname of "The Great Communicator" and I had great respect, if not love, for him. That respect has only increased in recent years.

Goodbye Dutch, and Godspeed.

 

[Blarneystoned]

Requiem

The Emperor is Dead

You gave us hope and now you are gone
You helped us heal the scars of Vietnam
With Jellybeans you mended wounds
And with fiercem fire you tore down Walls
You helped us bury our dead Marines
And landed fire on Khadafi's Regime
You brought the hostages back from hell
And left us all with your charming smile
You are the one we cannot replace
Is that really a birthmark on Gorbachev's Face
You passed out hammers to the West German
Which ended laughter in the halls of Stalin
It came down like you said it could
A domino effect like you said it would
You brought starwars to life
Out of Challenger's strife
In tragic times you were always sincere
Except when they shot you, your smile was clear
It takes more than one bullet, just like Teddy
You new the Russians just weren't ready
To risk it all and they couldn't keep up
Like a drunk sailor with a fist full of dollar
They said you spent too much
But I say it was a trickle down through economics you led them on
And we are still reaping the rewards today, it's catching on
The last man standing, but it's oh so tough
Before you ride off into the sunset like a rider rough
Could you show us once more that incredible smile?

Happy Trails Mr. President

Ave Atque Vale, Gipper!

(Hail and Farewell Gipper !)


Blarneystoned

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

It took me awhile to come up with something to say about this. In truth, I despised what the man did to our society, our country, our military, but...

I could never hate him and seeing him wither from Alzeheimer's disease hurt me on a deep and personal level. He was a man who truly gave a damn about his country and though he may have seemed extremist or dangerous, he brought a passion and verve into the world that has resonated after him. So, a farewell toast:

To Ronald Reagan! Someone who gave a fuck. May His Afterlife be free of the pain of his end.

 

[Blarneystoned]

The pain is already gone...

10 years of losing his mind is now over.....onward to the next dimension...we take the love with us ...Blarneystoned

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Re: Re: Bye-Bye

I started to blast you for your terrible manners but I refuse to fall to your level.

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

That was uncalled for, and extremely rude.

Quite!

But remember, Cloudy, what goes around comes around.

~lucky

 

[Blarneystoned]

This one I think is different

"He is the one who allowed the breakup of the Soviet Union," said Bogdan Chireac, a foreign affairs analyst for the Romanian newspaper Adevarul. "May God rest his soul."


Thank you Bogdan

Blarneystoned out

 

[Pure]

June 6, 2004

RONALD WILSON REAGAN 1911 2004

LA TIMES EDITORIAL

A Presidency Characterized by Paradox

Certainly no more improbable star has crossed the American political firmament than Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California and 40th president of the United States. Reagan left the presidency in January 1989, the only modern president to emerge from office more popular than when he entered. He was the eternal optimist, amiable but stubborn. He put a happy face on even the grimmest realities, often relying on dubious anecdotes and statistics. He romanticized the past and drew on an essential American optimism about the future. Reagan was perhaps the ultimate television president, a man schooled not in gritty precinct politics but in Hollywood movie acting.

Instead of enjoying twilight years as an adored elder statesman of the Republican Party, however, he began a long descent into the nothingness of Alzheimer's. As the disease advanced he was increasingly out of sight, yet his conservative ideology became a permanent fixture of politics.

Reagan's fiercely protective wife, Nancy, kept the descent of his mind mostly private. But in a speech in May she pleaded to President Bush for looser reins on stem cell research, which could lead to therapies against Alzheimer's. She sadly described her husband as being "in a distant place where I can no longer reach him."

His death at 93 came Saturday.

As president, Reagan was genial, ever-smiling — ignoring unpleasant facts, idealizing hopeful fantasies. He was supremely suited to take advantage of the electronic media that now dominate and shape modern political dialogue, placing image over substance. He brought to his White House tenure the grit, drama, pathos and courage of a Wild West movie hero, surviving an assassination attempt and a bout with cancer. Even detractors said that Reagan, who was notoriously detached and inattentive to the details of the presidency, was essentially playing his best role ever. "He is the ideal past, the successful future, the hopeful present, all in one," wrote the historian Gary Wills. Bush's admiration of Reagan is evident in his similarly sunny, uncomplicated style.

The mark of Reagan's presidency was paradox. Having campaigned as an implacable foe of government deficit spending, he left office with a federal debt that was nearly triple its level when he was inaugurated. He succumbed, as Bush has, to the fallacious "supply side" economic notion that government revenues rise if taxes are cut. He reviled the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" but ultimately met repeatedly with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and worked out a detente that led in the end to the fall of communism.

A New Deal Democrat in his youth, Reagan was in the vanguard of the Republican conservative revolution that is today the Republican establishment. Although he vowed to shrink government and eliminate Cabinet departments, he wound up adding one, the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Reagan, the first former union president (of the Screen Actors Guild) to win the White House, earned union enmity, although wide public praise, for firing striking air controllers in 1981, ultimately destroying their union. While espousing basic small-town American values, he was a divorced man with estranged children. His rhetoric against nascent Middle Eastern terrorism notwithstanding, his administration undertook to supply arms and spare parts to Iran in an arms-for-hostages deal that seriously undermined his second term. The oldest president ever, he appealed especially to young voters.

Hero though Reagan was to so many Americans, his legacy is marred. Economically, the Reagan years were epitomized by a freewheeling entrepreneurialism and free spending. But the affluent got more affluent and the poor got poorer. The number of families living below the poverty line increased by one-third. The Reagan administration's zeal for deregulation of industry helped create the savings and loan debacle, which left taxpayers holding the bag for billions of dollars in losses. All of this presaged a recurring malaise among American workers, who continue to see jobs lost to corporate downsizing and outsourcing.

His administration's resistance to federal hegemony in social issues led to significant retreats in civil rights. And Reagan's political caution on the AIDS scourge — an attitude driven by the connection to homosexuality — allowed valuable years to pass before the federal government took an assertive role in researching and preventing the disease.

The old Reagan has been gone for years, hidden within an irreversible fog. But he changed American politics for the long term. Enduring as well is the image: the cowboy hat, the genuine smile, hand aloft in greeting. Even his politics were friendly compared with today's, a lesson to those who hope for as big a legacy.

*

 

[SummerMorning]

Occasionally I wonder whether or not this man shouldn't have been there, in the Hague, on the bench with a few other int'l criminals...

 

[Svenskaflicka]

What do you say to American friends when an ex-president and bastard dies?

Congratulations?

 

[rgraham666]

Thank you, Pure.

That editorial nicely summed up my view of Reagan.

I'm sorry for his family, I'm sorry yet another miracle has passed from this world, but his policies, in my opinion, were an unmitigated disaster.

He was an image, not a President.

 

[oggbashan]

The UK owed a lot to President Reagan for his support, by providing diplomatic attempts to prevent war and for his administration's aid overt and covert during the Falklands War.

He showed that the US is a friend to the UK and as a friend said things that others couldn't say, but was there beside us when the chips were down.

Whether I knew or liked his policies is irrelevant. He behaved like a friend when we needed one.

Og

 

[Guest]

The UK owed a lot to President Reagan for his support, by providing diplomatic attempts to prevent war and for his administration's aid overt and covert during the Falklands War.

He showed that the US is a friend to the UK and as a friend said things that others couldn't say, but was there beside us when the chips were down.

Whether I knew or liked his policies is irrelevant. He behaved like a friend when we needed one.

Og

What Og said!

Lou

 

[sweetnpetite]

On thing I noticed was that the news reporters frequently refered to him as 'the president' rather than the former president. I don't think they did it on purpose, because they did correct themselves, I think they just think of him that way. I think that is a pretty great tribute.

Reagan is the first president I remember. I'm not his biggest fan, but there was much good about him that should be remembered, especialy in the coming days when many are in mourning.

from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5148407/

Despite Reagan’s often-forceful statements against the Soviet Union, Gorbachev said he also had a personal warmth that bolstered their relations.

“I deem Ronald Reagan a great president, with whom the Soviet leadership was able to launch a very difficult but important dialogue,” the Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying on Ekho Moskvy radio.

Earlier Sunday, Gorbachev was quoted by Interfax as calling Reagan “a statesman who, despite all disagreements that existed between our countries at the time, displayed foresight and determination to meet our proposals halfway and change our relations for the better.”

Gorbachev listed Reagan’s accomplishments as helping to “stop the nuclear race, start scrapping nuclear weapons, and arrange normal relations between our countries,” he was quoted as saying.

“I do not know how other statesmen would have acted at that moment, because the situation was too difficult. Reagan, whom many considered extremely rightist, dared to make these steps, and this is his most important deed,” he was quoted as saying.

 

[sweetnpetite]

What do you say to American friends when an ex-president and bastard dies?

Congratulations?

Bad form, Svenska

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

What do you say to American friends when an ex-president and bastard dies?

Congratulations?

He wasn't a bastard. His cabinet was filled with bastards and traitors to America, but the man himself was decent, well-meaning, affable, and kind. Remember also that he started suffering from the beginnings of Alzheimers in office. The strain that alone puts on a man is enough to excuse him from many of his disagreeable policies.

He was a good human and deserves to be mourned for that (policies and politics aside). Ronnie, here's a memorium flower. Take it to whatever your destination may be.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

Bad form, perhaps, but atleast I'm not a hypocrite. Women's rights suffered a lot during Reagan's reign. May I recommend "Backlash" by Susan Faludi?

And really - a guy who hasn't been your president since the 80'ies has died. It may not necessarily be a good thing, but is it really BAD?

I don't get this habit you have of holding ex-presidents in high regard, to the degree that you still call them Mr President, even though you helped get fim fired years ago.

Patriotism is like greek to me.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

*giving it a try*

<=====

Yay, Sweden!








Nope.


This SO isn't me.

 

[Guest]

This SO isn't me.

It's pretty though. P.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

6th of June today. Sweden's national holiday. The only ones celebrating are the royal family, the neo-nazis, and some publicity-horny people who want to be shown on TV in their costumes.

There's talk about making this day a REAL holiday, like Christmas Day or New Year's Day. I hope it doesn't go through.

 

[Guest]

I don't get this habit you have of holding ex-presidents in high regard, to the degree that you still call them Mr President, even though you helped get fim fired years ago.

Patriotism is like greek to me.

We didn't fire him he left office because we place limits on the amount of time a president can be in office. If not for those limits Reagan would have been elected again.

He was a good man.

Whether anyone likes it or not his being in office had a positive effect on the world, and the world will mourn with his passing.

I was to young to have voted for Reagan, but I remember his presidency, and he is the president that I will compare others to.

I mourn the loss of President Reagan, and pray for his family.

God speed Mr. President.

 

[Blarneystoned]

On Rights

While you are talking on rights...Dont you think the East Germans and the soviet peasantry deserved rights too. I think Reagan gave them all rights man and woman when the wall came down and Parastoika was implemented.....we still have a long way to go in Eastern Europe though...

Blarneystoned

 

[Blarneystoned]

Correction

God Speed Ronald Reagan