Fox News has the oldest audience of any cable channel

[judge death]

I don't even know where to begin.  Ronald Reagan was the greatest leader of my lifetime and I am proud to have served our country when he was commander in chief.  As for "the worst economy since the depression" - that would be one Jimmy Carter. Democrat.

This stupid Democratic Congress is addicted to one thing - spending.  They can't get enought and they can't stop,  I'll take the private sector anyday.

Judge, you are beyond liberal.

So, you're proud that reagan (SPIT!) sent the marines into beitut with orders to not load their weapons, making them dead meat when a suicide bomber drove a truck bomb into their barracks and the guards couldn't stop them with their empty rifles?

Or how about how reagan (SPI!) deregulated the S&Ls, causing the first big gubmint bailout of an industry we're still paying off?

Or how reagan ran up the debt and deficit?

BTW, thanks for calling me beyond liberal.

As to a democrat congress being addicted to spending, gow many billions, or trillions, have republicans urinated away in iraq, a country that had no al qeda, no WMD and no connections to 911?  Oh, but that money went to defense contractors, like haliburton who did not provide meals it was paid to and wired up showers so badly they've electrocuted at least 20 soldiers, so snce the money was going to big biz that was OK.

[judge death]

I guess, Judge, the thing that ticks me off about statements like the "vitriolic hatred" comment you made above is this -

where was all your righteous indignation for the previous 8 years, when George W. Bush was daily subjected to some of the most vicious, mean-spirited, and frequently outrageously false character assassinations in all of modern American political history?

Yes, there are some stupid, exaggerated, and nasty things being forwarded around about Obama by folks who come from my political side of the aisle.  And much of it may well be untrue and unfair.  All I can say is, we learned the methods by watching you guys for the previous 8 years, as you did all in your power to destroy a decent man doing the best he could at the world's most difficult job.

Democrats were not tryting to claim bush was't a lefit president due to birth, they did say his getting the florida electoral votes was fishy given his brother was gov. of glorida. 

They did not fillibuster every bill he brought up or vote automatically against everything he did, like the rpeublicans just did to kill a bill to extend health benefits to 911 workers suffering terrible health problems because bush ordered the EPA and OSHA to lie about the air safety at ground zero while people were cleaning it up.

They did not make allusions to armed revolt and /or suceeding from the union like the republicans are now.

So don't hand me that BS about how terrible democrats were to bush and how it was like what's being done to obama now, given I don't get my world views from fox I'm too well informed to buy it.

[lester1/2jr]

Reagan showed courage when he said hey middle east politics make no sense and pulled out of beirut.  and what happend: the same thing that would have happened except none of our guys were there to take bullets.

[Skull]

So don't hand me that BS about how terrible democrats were to bush and how it was like what's being done to obama now, given I don't get my world views from fox I'm too well informed to buy it.

Ok so why the Democrats dont want to boast about the New Healthcare Law?

Gee... the damn bill was so important they were voting on it on Christmas Eve... so important that they didnt HAVE TIME TO READ THE DAMN THING. So important that it needs to be passed now. So important that they dont want to talk about it.

Gee...

It only tells me that the Democrats are hoping that people will forget THE MOST IMPORTANT BILL EVER.


It's sad that there is only a few news sources willing to report this... really sad because some people (should I name names) want us to forget... THE HEALTHCARE LAW.

[Flick James]

Or how about how reagan (SPI!) deregulated the S&Ls, causing the first big gubmint bailout of an industry we're still paying off?

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 is the item you're referring to. This was a badly conceived act, because what it did was remove a number of real estate tax shelters. Investors ran for federal charters, which were insured with public dollars. This was where the bad idea was. The investors, because they knew their investments were insured by public funds, took risky investment moves knowing that the public money would bail them out, which it did, and, as you said, we're still paying for it. This was a surprisingly socialist move on the part of the Reagan administration in my mind, because insuring private investments with public money certainly isn't capitalism. This is why it kills me when Republicans point the finger at Democrats for being socialist, when Republican adminstrations have plagued the free market economy with plenty of their own government influence.

Back to my "two side of the same coin" analogy. Both parties artificially control the market. At least the Democrats are somewhat honest about being socialists. However, judge death, I am also pointing out that government intervention is nearly always to blame for economic crises, not capitalism.

[Rev. Powell]

Wow... this thread has exploded like a fragmentation grenade. 

Maybe all the politics can go in this one thread, that will make it easier to avoid for the people who can't stand this stuff...

[Flick James]

Wow... this thread has exploded like a fragmentation grenade. 

Maybe all the politics can go in this one thread, that will make it easier to avoid for the people who can't stand this stuff...

Not a bad idea. It's been getting thick lately. I've been providing plenty of fuel myself. Perhaps just a new thread that is aptly titled IF YOU DON'T LIKE POLITICS, DON'T LIKE TO DEBATE, GET YOUR FEELINGS EASILY HURT, OR JUST PLAIN WOULD RATHER TALK ABOUT BAD MOVIES, DON'T OPEN.

 

[indianasmith]

Judge - your post was filled with even more typos than usual.  Are you sober?

Yes, Reagan sent the Marines into Beirut in an attempt to stop the slaughter there.  The suicide bomber caught us off guard, and it was a horrible, horrible day.  I still think the intent was noble, and I still think we should have bombed the crap out of Iran who was responsible for both that and the Khobar Towers bombing.

Reagan ran up the deficit in order to build up our military and drive the Soviets into bankruptcy.  He succeeded.  It was well done.

By the way, did it ever occur to you that it is CONGRESS that writes the Federal Budget, CONGRESS that spends the money, and CONGRESS that borrows the money.  It seems to me like one party controlled Congress for most of the Reagan years.


Now, one more time - Saddam Hussein did have WMD's at one point.  We know this because he killed 20,000 Kurds with them.  You can not kill 20,000 Kurds by farting on them, so he MUST have had poisonous gas.

Bill Clinton bombed Saddam to damage his WMD capacity.  Every major Democrat in the Senate spoke out against Saddam's use of and stockpiling of WMD's.  Hilary, Kerry, Kennedy, all of them.

Bush had the cojones to do something about it and guess what?  They weren't there.  Not in great numbers anyway.  I think most of them had been destroyed, and the rest snuck across the border into Syria.  The point is, every major intelligence agency in the world said he had these things.  So the President acted on the best intelligence he had.

More later.  Gotta go cook supper.

[lester1/2jr]

Bush had the cojones to do something about it and guess what?

really? I don't remeber BUsh out there fighting and tracking down insurgents.  5,000 americans who could still be alive and with their families are dead.  to disarm a guy who didn't have arms who wasn't a threat with us and didn't want war with us.

cojones would have been telling the neocons to go to hell and saying this isn't worth one american life like his father did.

spending other peoples money and playing with other peoples lives isn't brave when there was no threat. when they had to TRY and create the illusion of a threat and even that didn't work

and the rest snuck across the border into Syria.

NO
they weren't.  and  mohammad atta didn't meet with iraqi intelligence and  saddam didn't have unmanned anthrax uavs  all this stuff has been disproven.  

Wouuld you like to buy my chevy metro? It's complete piece of garbage but seeing as how you enjoy defending lemons...
 

[indianasmith]

TO CONTINUE . . .

As far as Iraq goes, people forget the real history all too quickly.  Saddam was a bad actor who had twice invaded his neighbors.  When he got spanked for it the second time, he signed an armistice agreeing to behave himself.  Violation of any one of the 14 stipulations in the armistice would be cause for America and its allies to renew the war.  Over the next 10 years, he violated all of them.  He refused to document destruction of his weapons caches.  He refused to cooperate with UN Weapons Inspectors and ultimately booted them from the  country.  He rebuilt his military capacity.  He repeatedly fired on NATO aircraft in the "no fly" zone where he had agreed to let them operate.  He continued his genocide against the Kurds.  He contracted assassins to kill the former U.S. President who had humbled him.   And what did Bill "the dress stainer" Clinton do about it?  He lobbed a few missiles every now and then, and looked for another intern to diddle.  And while he was debating with special prosecutors about what the meaning of the word "is" is, the 9/11 hijackers slipped into our country and began training.
   Along comes Bush 43.  Six months into his Presidency, he faces the greatest crisis since Pearl Harbor.  His first action was to find those responsible and move against them in a real, meaningful way, refusing to take the easy path of "firing a $10 million dollar missile at a ten dollar tent and hitting a camel in the a$$," as he colorfully put it.  He destroyed the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and ran the Taliban out of the country.  Yes, they regrouped and counterattacked, but it wasn't a bad first move.  

The question was, what next?  True, Saddam was not behind 9/11.  Bush never claimed he was.  However, who was the consistently WORST actor in that part of the world?  Who had manufactured and used WMD in the past?  Who had the capacity and the personnel to do so again?  And who would take greater glee in putting a stick in the eye of the Great Satan?   Saddam was given numerous warnings. He was given the chance to flee into exile.  He was given the opportunity to come clean.  He refused them all.  On the eve of the U.S. invasion in '03, he was offering to provide Sarin gas shells to Hamas so they could start a jihad against Israel, in an effort to distract out attention.

  We had just endured the greatest terror attack in American history.  But a single 5 gallon bucket of Anthrax, dumped in the New York subway lines, could have killed 100,000 Americans in a week or less.  And there is ample evidence Saddam manufactured and toyed with Anthrax in the late 80's.  Going after Saddam, at that time, made sense.  And he was toppled in a week, and captured within nine months - on my birthday, Dec. 13, 2003.  Had it just been a matter of mopping up the Iraqi military and installing a more cooperative government, we might have been out of Iraq in 2005.   But Iran and Al Qaeda, normally mortal enemies coming from two different sects of Islam, united in an effort to defeat us, aided and abetted by liberal Democrats in the American Congress and media who were all too willing to see America lose another war, as long as they could blame a Republican for it.  So we faced a well-armed and fanatically determined insurgency abroad, and near crippling treasonous activity at home - much of it from PEOPLE WHO HAD VOTED FOR THE WAR, but lacked the guts to win it.

   50 years from now, when the partisan hatred has faded and the fog of war receded, I think Bush will receive due credit as a tough, determined, and courageous leader who stuck to his guns in order to win a war before passing the mantle of leadership to a party that was actively lobbying for America's disgraceful defeat and withdrawal.

Now back to Mr. Reagan, "Judge" - I never said he was perfect.  He was simply the best in my lifetime, a judgment that history is coming more and more to confirm.  The last poll of American historians put him 8th on the list, out of 44.  He made mistakes and had his flaws, but the fact is that millions of Europeans who lived under one of the most repressive and evil regimes in history now live in liberty thanks to his unflagging determination.  And a coutnry that was languishing in defeatism and despair was inspired to believe in itself again, and take its place of leadership in the world once more.   In the end, we are remembered for our finest moments, not our worst.  We are remembered for the better angels of our nature, not our private demons.  That is why Ronald Reagan is and will be remembered as a great man.

  FDR was a compulsive liar, an adulterer, a Machiavellian manipulator, and a cynical scoundrel at times.  He deliberately sacrificed the crew of the USS Panay in an attempt to bring the nation to war with Japan two years before Pearl Harbor.  But does anyone remember him for those things?  Of course not.  He is remembered as the inspiring leader whose soaring rhetoric led the nation through the Great Depression and World War II, the untiring experimenter whose New Deal gave the people hope, whether or not it did a thing to end the Depression, and as the unflagging war leader who would settle for nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the tyrants who started World War II.  AND RIGHTLY SO.  History is beginning to pass its judgement on Reagan already, "Judge", and despite the discretion your username implies, History has found you to be wrong.

Now, last of all, about the attacks on Bush - no, the Democrats didn't claim he wasn't legit because of his birth, although I'm sure they would have if he had been born under the same circumstances as our current President.    They did claim that he stole the election - which numerous recounts by many different news organizations have now found to be a false claim.  My source for that claim, by the way, is the Washington Post, not FOX News!

  The questions about Obama's birth center around the fact that his father was a foreign national and his mother an underage American girl, and the fact that he has never produced the "long form" birth certificate he should have received if he was born in Hawaii as he claims.  There is not a shred or scintilla of evidence that he was born in Africa, and all the circumstantial evidence points to his birth in Hawaii, just as he claims.  I think his refusal to provide the long form is a clever political ploy - as long as it is not available, then the "birther" movement will never quite die, and he will be able to paint all of his critics as fringe-dwelling nutjobs.  But there is a foreign-ness about Obama that a lot of Americans feel uncomfortable with - the many sealed records from his younger days, the overseas trips as a young man, his lifetime of associations with some very radical and unsavory characters.  This man is much further left than his soothing centrist rhetoric would lead you to believe.  And frankly, the more extreme criticisms you bring up - armed revolt, secession, et cetera . . . are hardly the opinon of most mainstream Americans.  They are either the products of the wing nuts that both parties do possess, or comments taken out of context by politicians who should have watched their mouths a bit better (such as our own Governor Perry, here in TX).

Your bashing of Haliburton is further example of your extremist views.  Capitalism does produce its occasional bad actors, but most of the criticisms of Haliburton you cite come from far left wing sources and are either exaggerated, fabricated, or at best, very selective in their information.  Haliburton hires thousands upon thousands of American workers, providing good pay and benefits, putting groceries on the table for many American families, and producing goods and services that people want and need.  How about you, Judge?  Do you produce anything that other people buy or use?  Do you put food on the table for thousands of families across the world every day?

  I love how you lefties will pile on every error, mistake, or misdeed that any private corporation commits, without ever proposing what you will replace American capitalism with once you are done destroying it.  Your rhetoric pretty much brands you as a socialist, if not a flat out Communist.  How well has that philosophy worked out for you?  How many people has Communism set free in the last century?  How many Communist governments respect human rights and dignity?  What was the final death toll for Communism in the last hundred years?  How many people did Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara murder?  Something along the line of 300 million, wasn't it?  More than have perished in all the religious wars in human history.  Go Communism!

Oh, I see Lester has posted!
As far as Bush's physical courage goes - No, U.S. Presidents don't lead troops in combat.  Not since 1864, anyway.  That's just the way our system works.  Yes, we lost 5,00 lives in Iraq.  But if Saddam had handed over some of his scraps of remainind WMD to Hizbollah or Al Qaeda, or any other group determined to strike us, how many innocent American civilians might have died?  The military personnel who were doing the dying supported their commander in chief - by 75% or so in the 2004 election, and they still voted Republican in 2008.  But it was Bush who insisted on returning to Washington on 9/11, against the advice of the CIA.  It was Bush who threw out the first pitch at the 2001 World Series in New York City, despite threats on his life, and hurled a perfect strike while wearing full Kevlar!  And it was Bush who flew into Iraq on Thanksgiving Day to be with the troops, landing at an airfield where U.S. planes had been shot down just days before.
He showed as much physical courage as any President in the last century.

[Allhallowsday]

INDY!  You're an apologist!!   

[judge death]

Judge - your post was filled with even more typos than usual.  Are you sober?

Yes, I have a neck problem that pinches nerves at times, especially when I'm sitting over a keyborad for a while. It causes my fingers to get stiff, numb and tingly. This makes it hard to type perfectly.

[judge death]

So don't hand me that BS about how terrible democrats were to bush and how it was like what's being done to obama now, given I don't get my world views from fox I'm too well informed to buy it.

Ok so why the Democrats dont want to boast about the New Healthcare Law?

Gee... the damn bill was so important they were voting on it on Christmas Eve... so important that they didnt HAVE TIME TO READ THE DAMN THING. So important that it needs to be passed now. So important that they dont want to talk about it.

Gee...

It only tells me that the Democrats are hoping that people will forget THE MOST IMPORTANT BILL EVER.


It's sad that there is only a few news sources willing to report this... really sad because some people (should I name names) want us to forget... THE HEALTHCARE LAW.

They're not bragging because they didn't have thr guts to tell the republicans "You lost the last election, not sit down, shut up and stop trying to keep us from passing the healthcare law before we have to physically kick you a--s-s to do it!"

The democrats tried playing by the rules with the republicans and had every bill they raised filibustered, every motion they made filibustered, etc. The republicans managed to gut the healthcare bill gutted on behalf of the helathare industry at the expense of the
public.

They should have used the nuclear option to eliminate the filibuster, but they didn't. In a reverse I'm sure the damn republicans would have done it without a second thought, like they do everything else.

[indianasmith]

Judge - your post was filled with even more typos than usual.  Are you sober?

Yes, I have a neck problem that pinches nerves at times, especially when I'm sitting over a keyborad for a while. It causes my fingers to get stiff, numb and tingly. This makes it hard to type perfectly.

You have my sympathies, and I retract the aforementioned comment.

However, you are still wrong.

[Flick James]

Indiana,

judge death didn't bring up Halliburton, I did, and I'm not an extremist. I'm just a guy who served six years defending our country. Further, I am not a disgrace to my country nor my uniform for having my own mind. I believe that this and the last adminstration should be ashamed of its foriegn policy.