The "St. Ronnie" Koolaid is some scary sh*t......

[marmar]

.... I ran into a guy I went to high school with yesterday, nice guy, conservative, one of the few under-40 Republicans I know, but a nice guy. He was telling me how disappointed he is in John McCain, and that he can't vote for him. He's not an Obama fan either, but I (half) jokingly said to him, "Fine, I'd prefer that you not vote."
Then he went into this whole pining for the Reagan '80s thing. This is a guy whose father, a unionized auto worker, was laid off numerous times during the '80s with Reagan's union-busting, and whose uncle, a former air traffic controller, was fired outright by the Great Ronald Reagan.
But yet he warbles on and on about how the Republican Party has not been the same since St. Ronnie left.
I was about to launch into a Thom Hartmann-esque rant about how responsible Reagan is for the demise of the middle class, but figured, "Why Bother?" If he can't figure it out from his own experience, then there's no hope.
Just exchange pleasantries and move on.

[countingbluecars]

1. Oh how they wish they had

another Reagan-someone as popular as Britney or Paris.

[mitchum]

2. He is either really stupid or is actually pining for his childhood

or maybe both

[navarth]

3. The canonisation of St. Reagan is disgusting indeed...

but you should have disabused him. Easy for me to say, I know...but I've done the same thing and seen lights go off in their head. If their mind is somewhat open like this guy's seems to be, then hey...let a little light in!

The Saint Reagan meme has to be challenged.

Just my 2 cents

[G_j]

4. Reagan completely gutted Carter's energy conservation policies

on taking office,

we have a lot to thank him for... NOT

well actually, we could thank him for the mess we are in today..

[Orrex]

5. The only thing keeping Reagan from being the worst post-Nixon President is

Well, you know.

[glowing]

6. Well I'm 29 and I don't remeber Ronnie Regan.. but my mother liked him

and normally doesn't like Repigs.. I'm not sure what it was about him.. I'm young enough to look at the history and recongnize St. Ronnie was a joke. I don't remember any tear down walls. I do hear about Iran-Contra and when I ask my mom about that, she explained it.. AND then I asked her, if he did that, why does everyone think he's a great President.. Seems to me he broke the law. Innocent questions by a 16/ 17 yr old sometime make you stop and think.. "how great was that guy"

AND I said, the Drug Wars started under Regan, and I have explained to her that it was and is the worst waste of money that has ever been embarked upon. Its a waste of lives and tax money that could be used on students to learn and take themselves further than selling drugs and living on the streets.. she agreed.

[Warpy]

7. He's nostalgic for his idyllic childhood

and not for the hideous policies of Reagan.

I find that a lot with Ronnies, the kids who grew up or became adults during his reign. They really don't remember what Reagan destroyed. All they remember was being warm and fed and cared for while a smooth pitchman with a soothing voice told them lies on the TV.

[mitchum]

10. Exactly...for them that bastard represents the days of whine and Legos

[MJW]

8. I remember the Reagan era vividly

I was a single mom , supporting a family , and We barely survived . I worked for the state of Indiana (which was broke) and you could not buy a raise



The Reagan worshippers make me sick .

[hedgehog]

9. I'm reminded of the story told I think by Oliver Sachs about a group

of patients cracking up while watching Reagan speak. This particular group had a brain malfunction which caused them to pay more attention to a person's unconscious gestures than to the actual words. The patients thought that the fact that Reagen was standing up and so clearly lying through his teeth was hilarious. The moral of the story is that sometimes the impaired have better vision than the rest of us!

[Zomby Woof]

11. As Reagan said, "Facts are stupid things"

You were smart to avoid an argument. LOL. Not so, with myself:

There are these young and stupid repukes at work, born when he was in the WH, so they get their pro-Reagan talking points from their inbred rube parents in Antelope Valley. One refers to Reagan as a "rock star". :eyes: So I told her about his "I won't negotiate with terrorists" lie on a national TV address (outranks Clinton's Monica-denial by light years), his record deficits (6 of his 8 budgets submitted to Congress outspent the Democratic House), signing the largest tax increase in history - adjusted to inflation - in 1986, when working people picked up more of their FICA tab, arming a young Osama bin Laden, wrecking the EPA, allowing a wholesale rip-off of Interior by mining public lands, fattening the military-industrial complex, wounding the student loan program and other worthy legacies of the Great Society, cutting off funding of mental health facilities, forcing the states to send thousands of mentally ill to the streets, putting the marines in Lebanon in harm's way and distracting us with "Look! Grenada is safe from communism!" ploy, appointing anti-civil libertarian Supreme Court justices, cementing the GOP's ties to the Religious Right, etc etc ad nauseum, Ed Meese, James Watt, Don Regan, G.H.W. Bush, Ollie North, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Anne Gorsuch, Micheal Deaver, Contras/Cocaine/Coors, et al and so forth.

Of course, the only comeback these little bots can summon is "Are you a socialist? Why do you want to punish the rich with TAXES? *whine* Clinton disgraced the Oval Office with a blowjob!" and so on. I mocked them for being whiny and soft for bitching about taxes - when they don't even pay any! I shoot back, "You make what? $12.00 per hour, so no one is going to raise your taxes. You owe the Democrats of the 80's and 90's for such goodies as EITC and The Child Tax Credit (these are invariably single mothers with young kids who take MY tax dollars, but being neither greedy nor selfish, that is okay by me, they DO need a safety net), AND you are supremely naive if you think Clinton was the first (or the most recent) occupier of the Oval Office to get a BLOW JOB there." The Fox News talking points are CARTOONS, and it makes their supporters CARTOONS.

Fucking ignorance. Hannity and his ilk can be happy. Their propaganda is safe in a new generations' hands. It galls me to no end that these YOUNG and POOR rubes bitch and moan about BIG GOVERNMENT and TAXES when they BENEFIT from them, and aren't even in the remote neighborhood of being "rich". And this was all before I lectured them about how capital gains taxes are the best loophole going. In fact, you'd have to be a *stupid* rich person to get caught in the AMT or maximum tax brackets.

All my lecturing was for naught. You can't undo 20 years of conditioning by Mom, Dad, or Fox News. They have their plastic minds made up. They read Cosmo, and constantly check their make-up with their little compact mirrors. They bitch about their abusive boyfriends and husbands, but love them anyway. You can't argue with sick Republican minds.

Yes, I need a new job, lol. All the liberals in blue L.A., and I work where the exception reigns - White Flight Central.