Remarks of the President and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of
the United Kingdom Following Their Meetings, February 26, 1981

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Soooooo, Reagan and Rosalyn are supposed to be best friends. They are only a few months apart, and because our families have a track record of getting along fantabulously, it's only logical.

Reagan didn't get the memo.

Now, I'm not saying that Reagan doesn't like Rosalyn. I'm just saying that Reagan and Rosalyn ARE best friends, and Reagan just doesn't know it yet. I'm trying to cut her a little slack, because there are a lot of things she doesn't know yet, like how to negotiate a toilet and the fact that she needs to sleep in on the weekends.

The girls got together Wednesday, and I was a little disappointed that Reagan wasn't more of an accomodating hostess. I'll show you what happened:

We sat them next to each other on the couch to get some pictures. Rosalyn (right) giggled and cooed like a precious little baby. Reagan (left) stared at her like she was out of her mind.

According to Chris, this is Reagan, using the Jedi Mind Trick to put an end to all that Happy Baby Noise Making. It almost seems too cruel to even joke about- I'm crossing my fingers that you get the Star Wars reference.

Rosalyn, like a good strong Jedi Knight, breaks Reagan's Force. (Was Reagan trying to make Rosalyn disappear? Because she kind of looks like her hands are fading away. Bad Reagan.)

Apparently, later on that day, Reagan pulled the stick out of her diaper warmed up to her Best Friend. I wasn't around to see it though, because at the insistence of my mother-in-law (who had also come over for the day) Chris and I snuck out of the house so we could have a little date night, seeing as how it was my birthday. (Told ya I married in to the best family ever!) As the story goes, Reagan was even giving Baby Roz kisses. (I'm just hoping she wasn't trying to head-butt her.)

I think Reagan has some issues sharing the spotlight. You should have seen the looks she started shooting me when I got out my camera and *gasp* started taking pictures of Roz. I swear she said "Et tu Mommy?". Finally, Chris swooped in (literally) to play with Reagan for a bit so I could take some pictures of Roz without Reagan getting an inferiority complex.

Finally, I was able to get a few pics of the little Nieceypoo that I am SO SO SO in love with!

While Obama has shared his moments of controversy, what is meant to hurt him ultimately turns to Obama gold. Even in his European trip to Iraq, Israel and in a recent segue to Germany, the heads of state, people and wannabes on every level gather around him like a moth to a singular flame of light. To the chagrin and frustration of conservatives, he already carries the mantle of both president and statesman in the eyes of millions, and now this has been passed overseas. To Obama’s opponents, that is what makes the usually unflappable, logical and charismatic Obama a great political danger. He aptly catches the imagination while addressing greatness of unity, even the importance of morality, as he embodies a vision for a new world.

The religious right and many conservative Christians have been strangely reticent this election. Clearly, none of the candidates really represent true conservative views and desires. This writer is surprised that some "right-wingers" haven't made the connection between the charisma of Barack Obama and the perceptions by some religious Christians of the expected antichrist, whom they believe to be a singular man destined to change history, promote one-world government and result in the second coming of Christ.

His rock-star appearance in Germany was well received by an international crowd of nearly 200,000. His speech was well delivered and yet, curiously compared to President Ronald Reagan. Perhaps the comparison is inevitable. Reagan spoke of certain new unities between the "East and West", the East joining the relative freedom of the West. Reagan noted that the "totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront." Senator Obama spoke of unifying the world. While Obama is no Reagan, his personal connection to his audience rests more in his intellect than in his personal demeanor, but like Reagan, doesn’t take himself too seriously to relate to others, even of different opinion.

He plainly paints himself as a world citizen, to many, a moniker for a globalist. Yet, his appeal isn’t elitist; born from the very roots of simplicity and humility; infused with the multiple cultures of two divergent Americas. Like many, he paints the dream of freedom that he offers to share with the world, a message of prosperity, optimism and grit. If we can dream it, we can do it.

Barack Obama successfully captures the idea that people work together, struggle, and sacrifice for a better life. He hasn't mentioned what he expects sacrifice to be. A life of commitment to ideals and common value is what America has forgotten about. The good life was handed to many Americans for forty years during the middle of the last century. America could do not wrong in its' own mind. Life could only get better. The idea that any kind of sacrifice was required was forgotten. In life’s struggle, America forgot the importance of human value. Senator Obama points to human value, pointing that value on the world scene. In the past, most Americans bought into secularism, materialism and self. Entitlement was born and flourished. It still does today. He hasn't spoken against these ailments of self-aggrandized society.

Obama aptly pointed out that Berlin, like America, has struggled through dark times. He spoke of duty and unity, a commonality of humanity against fear and tyranny. The word tyranny captures the attention of many Americans that see the current political scene in America as one of corruption and tyranny against freedom itself. Ultimately, the depth of his desire to really fight corruption and the perception of tyranny truly remains to be seen. Still, America is not Berlin, nor will it ever be. Senator Obama draws the point that America, like Berlin is the center of a unifying force.

“Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.” Is Senator Obama speaking of a new world government or is he simply speaking of working independently as sovereign nations for the good of the whole? The fact that he shares the same political space as Al Gore makes many uncomfortable. Yet even John McCain buys off on much of Al Gore’s legacy of global power, cooperation and causation. What makes Obama different is that Obama says that he is about tearing down new walls that humanity builds to separate itself. This inspiration of presentation makes him unique. John McCain doesn't claim to represent any such moral order. Barack Obama, like this author, knows what it is like to live between two separate worlds that have slowly come together in sometimes uneasy acceptance.

Barack Obama emphasizes the need to listen and has portrayed that need persistently to the embarrassment of many. The pride of politics is deep in America. What Obama is suggesting on the surface is counter-cultural, even dangerous to established old guard policies in American politics, if he is truly honest about garnering change through the support of fellow Americans. Americans must buy the dream for change. Many do.

While he has separated himself from the preponderance of old guard politics, he is still dependent on those foundations for his existence, which in theory holds great danger if he holds to his projected ideals without compromise. Old guard Democratic politics in Congress are, in part, a threat to what he speaks of. Unfortunately, separation from where America is now is exactly what is required for the change that America really needs. Does this really speak of world unity?

On the issues, never have the two parties been closer together on more issues. With few exceptions, voting Republican is quite similar to voting Democrat. There is more agreement than divergence on central cores of life application and political policies. Republicans have settled into a vision of benign financial neglect and political protection. As a result, Republicans have been forced to buy into a few remaining issues to hold the line of their significance: for example, the Second Amendment, national security and abortion. Most Republicans have taken on the appearance of Democrats and have proved little better where the rubber meets the road. Global warming, compromised policies, lack of creativity, moral ineptitude and self-serving politics has blurred the lines of government to a scary sameness. That is the danger of selling out. There is little distinction between the opposites except the old tired cornerstones of virtue, hidden corruption, self-satisfaction and ideas that hardly hold the imagination. The nation at-large is tired of lies, lack of hope, low expectations and blandness.

Obama isn’t talking about selling out to the past. He is one of a few that admits that freedom is a journey, a trial, not a one-time event. In an election year of sameness and similarity, he doesn’t have to work hard to sell the issues. This may be the Achilles heel of the election process this year. The Democrat debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has consumed the desire to speak about the issues. Much of the country has decided that old guard issues simply don't matter. Most Americans perceive politicians as being sold to the same policies, a political rut commandeered by behind-the-scenes fear and desire for personal benefit. Whose fault is that?

Whether the political opposition likes it or not, the vision and energy of Barack Obama is really the largest idea that sets the political world apart. More of the same old political jealousy just isn’t going to work anymore for America. He is painting the idea that he represents something different. Barack Obama is young enough to believe his own words without focusing on a vision of self-satisfaction. Like it or not, that is the gold behind Barack Obama, a black gold spun from two cultures. ~ E. Manning, © TNTalk!

Today we must work together in our efforts to tear down this wall of hate towards new ideas, tear down the wall of fear in American politics, tear down the wall of racial politics, and tear down this wall of negative perceptions of America in the world.

This campaign is not about Barack Obama the man, but it’s about what and who the man represents. Hope.

He would not be here if it wasn’t for hope and the ambition of countless individuals who said to the purveyors of the status quo, “Open This Gate”. Open this gate of freedom is essentially what President Abraham Lincoln said in 1862 with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Open this gate of opportunity as Frederick Douglass essentially was saying by the example of his life. Open the gates of justice and equality to all as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. essentially said to them. Essentially we’re telling the American people who sides with John McCain to end their quest for the status quo and the continuation of America’s depression and embrace of the schizophrenic policies of the Bush Administration. It’s time to open the gate.

Tuesday, November 4^th we will have that opportunity to open these gates. We will have the opportunity to open these gates and to be apart of a movement towards a new day.

This will not be easy and the battle has yet to be won.

Just like that wall that was erected in Berlin in 1952, America has erected a psychological wall. This wall is made not of stone, but of a resistance to change. Change seems to be a foreign policy to those who has followed and embrace polices of the Bush Administration such as John McCain. The policies that has lead America down a path to a failing economy, record breaking levels of home foreclosures and raising fuel prices to name a few.

Just as Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate demanding Mr. Gorbachev, “Open This Gate”. Come Tuesday, November 4^th Americans of goodwill and who knows that we must fix what George W. Bush has destroyed will have the opportunity to do as Germany did in October 1990, reunite America back to its place in the world, the beacon of democracy.

We must because the world is watching.

……………………

Now I’m just a regular Black guy in America. Regular not in the sense of how Black men are portrayed in the media, but just a regular voter. I love my country in light of her sins, because I my vision and impression of her is keen enough to see beneath the rough exterior of her surface. I only want the best for the country and we can’t afford to miss the mark again. This is why I am passionate about the judgment and leadership of Barack Obama. We will not always agree on every issue, but I believe he is more than capable to bring back that shine that America once gleamed in the eyes of the world.

Source:

Yahoo News “Obama and German leader discuss war and economics”

White House hopeful Barack Obama has told Berliners the US and Europe have drifted apart and it is time for them to come together again.

"If we're honest... we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart and forgotten our shared destiny," he said.

Thousands of people turned out to hear him make the only public speech of his current world tour.

His words were broadcast live in Germany, where he is a popular figure.

He began the speech by paying tribute to the Berliners who held out against Soviet pressure during the blockade after World War II.

Appealing for a renewed partnership with Europe, he identified terrorism, nuclear proliferation, drugs and climate change as global challenges.

The BBC's Steve Rosenberg reports from Berlin that the Illinois senator, 46, is very popular in Germany, where surveys suggest three-quarters of people want him to be the next US president.

Mr Obama will be hoping that once TV pictures of him addressing cheering crowds of Berliners have been beamed back to America it will boost his image as an international statesman, and his chances of beating Republican rival John McCain this autumn, our correspondent adds.

Anthony: Below I have posted addresses to the people of Berlin by two American Presidents.

Kennedy - I am a Berliner - Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Kennedy in full cold-war rhetoric flow. (I prefer Obama's more conciliatory tone)

Reagan - Tear Down This Wall

Reagan in similar vein:

'Intertwined world'

"While the 20th Century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history," Mr Obama said.

"In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common," he continued.

"In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe's role in our security and our future."

"But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together," he added.

He said that partnership and co-operation among nations was "not a choice".

"It is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity," he argued.

The time had come, the Democratic contender said, to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it".

It was the moment, he said, to end the conflict in Iraq, to "renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons" and to "come together to save this planet".

World tour

Mr Obama kicked off the European leg of the Democrat's world tour ahead of November's US presidential election.

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German Country and Western fans explain why they support Obama

Earlier, he met German leaders including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Mr Obama flew to Germany after visiting Israel and the West Bank and is due to visit France on Friday, then Britain on Saturday.

Security is tight in Berlin, with one report that the hotel where Mr Obama is staying in Berlin was closed off after a suspicious package was found.

Nothing gets on God's nerves like hypocrites, falsifiers, syndicators and and slanderers. And he gets really mad when you tell his worshipers their pious moralizing is in bad taste.

Back in the 60s Malcolm X said we had to call Negroes "African-Americans". In the 70s we had to learn what "environmentalism" meant. In the 80s -- the greatest decade in the history of the United States -- Liberal wingnuts told us it wasn't "politically correct" to call Barnard College a girls' school, throw our styrofoam Big Mac cartons out the window of our cars, or create a shadow government. In the 90s we made a comeback thanks to our d-bag heroes in the House and on the radio, giants of d-baggery like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. By the time our dark lord of d-baggery was elected to the highest office in the land it had become PC to be anti-PC!

The physics of it are as simple as the plot of a Tom Clancy novel or an episode of 24. If someone thinks you are an ass for being an ass, they are an ass; if you are an ass you are an honest, freethinking, moral, courageous, hero -- but only so long as you accuse someone of being an ass because they accused you of being an ass because you were, in fact, being an ass. It's a no-brainer.

When someone tells you you should be ashamed of yourself for being such a selfish, mean, sneaky, lying, smug, irritating blowhard, they're being PC. When you tell someone they should watch what they say about America or else they might end up in Gitmo, you're being a patriot. Be a free thinker. When someone points out your hypocrisy, accuse them of being PC!

Radio Address to the Nation on Domestic Social Issues
January 22, 1983

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Imagine for a second that Ronald Reagan was not the stand up guy we all knew him to be, and that the Cold War ended up in a full-scale nuclear conflict. Nuclear winter would settle in, and many of the species we know about would likely die or become scarce. Not that it would really matter too much because people in general would become scarce as well, but for the sake of argument, lets say that available food was not, um, available...yeah.

Well, some geniuses came up with the idea of a Seed Bank. These structures are basically safe houses for...you guessed it - seeds. There is one in Norway that just recently opened (pictured below) that is so far north that it is likely to be untouched by pretty much anything we throw at it (including, apparently, a direct hit with a nuke). Any country can come make a deposit of seeds and withdraw them at any time, and apparently because they're kept at -4 degrees farenheit, the seeds are good for up to 1,000 years.

Actually wait up a second. How in hell does a scientist actually know how long something like a seed would last? There weren't scientists doing this kind of experiment in the year 1008, so where is this notion coming from? My guess is that people were looking for a number and one of the scientists ("seedologists" - a phrase I just coined) just came out with "about 1,000 years" and it stuck. Anyway here's a picture of the facility:

No wonder the seeds are fucking cold. I bet I would piss yellow ice out there.

They also have guards, naturally. Talk about probably the single most boring job in existence. I mean, seriously, who is going to rob a fucking seed bank? Here's one of them:

Kind of looks like a guard from the N64 game goldeneye.

[...]

According to a new World Bank report, despite a worldwide increase in access to contraception and contraceptive technologies, some 51 million unintended pregnancies take place every year in the developing world, and an additional 25 million pregnancies are gestated by women who use faulty contraception or don't understand the methods they're using.

Of that number, according to the World Bank, some 68,000 women die from botched or unsafe abortions each year, and some 5.1 million are left permanently disabled by them. "Giving women access to modern contraception and family planning also helps to boost economic growth while reducing high birth rates so strongly linked with endemic poverty, poor education and high numbers of maternal and infant deaths," Joy Phumaphi, the World Bank's vice-president for human development, and a former health minister in Botswana, said in a statement.

How does that connect to the Bush administration? Simple. Since the moment he stepped into office, Bush's commitment to the foolish "abstinence only" training both domestically and internationally has been coupled with a slavish devotion to the restrictive, ghoulish, "global gag rule", introduced by Ronald Reagan in 1984, that cut off funding for any organisation that used USAID funds to even touch the word "abortion". That meant an organisation couldn't counsel a woman on abortion as an option, even if it received money from an entirely separate funding source to do so. Given that the 1973 Helms Amendment already banned US funds from paying for overseas abortions, Reagan's policy gagged healthcare providers and gave them a stark choice: lose crucial American funding (from the creation of USAID in 1965 to 1984, some 40% of all foreign funding to population control-oriented organisations globally came from the US), or severely limit the way they talked about reproductive choices.

Bill Clinton repealed the policy, but Bush reinstated it the moment he arrived in Washington, in January 2001. Then, in August 2003, he tried to deepen its impact, extending the ban from USAID to the entire state department, pushing to ban all employees at state from even discussing the consequences of abortion. Several reports issued at the time illustrated just how devastating Bush's policy had become. By 2002 USAID had ended shipments of contraceptives to 16 developing nations in Africa and Asia as a direct consequence of the gag rule.

Instead of ending abortions, the global gag rule pushed women into back alleys and undermined, even closed, organisations that would have counselled women on how not to get pregnant in the first place. By diminishing access to contraception, it was actually laying the groundwork for unsafe abortions. The global gag rule didn't just gag healthcare providers about abortion. It gagged them on contraception and education. Since 2002, the Bush administration has also withheld funding - to the tune of $39.7m - from the United Nations Population Fund, claiming - despite evidence to the contrary - that UNFPA is connected to forced abortions in China. The shortfall from the US has also helped undermine the spread of contraception and education around the world, particularly in Africa.

"Hundreds of women are dying every day in poor countries from botched abortions," says Barbara Crane, executive vice-president of the North Carolina-based reproductive rights organisation IPAS, who wrote me by email last week. "By repeatedly cutting the budget for international family planning and putting in place the global gag rule, the supposedly 'pro-life' Bush administration ignores this tragic reality - and without doubt causes more unsafe abortions, posing high costs to women, their families and society at large. It is ironic that the same groups that oppose abortion rarely step up and support better access to contraception."

The Bush administration has time and again put American women's lives second to a religiously inspired relationship to women and reproductive health. Take their latest attempt to restrict American women's access to contraception and the kind of pre-emptive contraceptive measures that pro-life forces should love. In this latest salvo, the US department of health and human services would allow any healthcare provider the right to refuse to treat a woman, and defines "abortion" in such a broad manner as to restrict access to IUDs, the morning after pill, and some birth control pills. This affects any entity – from public and private hospitals to pharmacies - that receives public funding from HHS, explains Jill Morrison, senior counsel at the National Women's Law Centre. "Under the guise of simply interpreting current law," Morrison explained, if this HHS proposal goes through it would "completely expand the federal abortion refusal laws to include some of the most commonly used forms of contraception." Morrison said it was fair to call this a "domestic gag rule".

The Bush administration's relationship to sex and reproduction has been consistently abysmal, from their utterly failed effort to promote abstinence only among teenagers to its unique ability to hire militantly anti-contraception "experts" like Susan Orr, a veteran of the religious Family Research Council, who was named acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in October of last year (and stepped down, quietly, in May). Orr was previously known for championing a measure that would strip funding for birth control for federal workers, saying she was "quite pleased because fertility is not a disease. It's not a medical necessity that you have it" and earlier calling contraception part of a "culture of death".

The Bush administration's notion of contraception and sex education has been consistently – maddeningly - oxymoronic. Abortion rates are lowest in countries where women have access to education, especially education on contraception. So while we in the US hold our collective breath, waiting out these last few months of Bush's efforts to restrict our freedoms, globally women are literally dying for him to leave.

Remarks on Signing the Human Rights and Day of Prayer
for Poland Proclamations, December 10, 1982

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While attempting to defeat one "evil empire", Ronald Reagan seems to have armed another. During the 1980's Reagan not only helped funnel $1 Billion dollars (with the help of Saudi King Fahd and his star fundraiser Osama Bin Laden)to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, he also sent arms to both Iran and Iraq, hoping the eventual winner would have a pyrrhic victory.

A wonderful piece by Juan Cole on how Reagan and the US influenced the creation of Al Qaeda...

Washington Post Editor Steven Coll connects the dots on Democracy Now

The New York Times Week in Review writes about the uncomfortable alliance between the CIA and ISI in Pakistan.

Happy B-lated Birthday Shoey.

In honor of summertime and my super sweet cousin Rea, I wanted to share some pictures from her trip to visit last summer.  This one definitely tops my list of personal favorites.  I sure miss her when we are apart and I can't wait to see her on my trip to Phoenix...only 102 days to go.  Seems like forever or is that just the temperature in Phoenix today?

Here's the whole editorial if you're interested. You should be.

I immediately had an answer for Mr. Herbert (and I emailed it to him; we'll see if I'm lucky enough to get a response; if I do, I'll post it). I too have been wondering when this great change in national attitude came about, marveling at the difference between this flea-bitten, undernourished and bony version of America in contrast to the strong, proud country that existed less than two generations ago. When the mighty fall, they fall fast and hard.

I believe the change started, though we didn't realize it at the time, when Ronald Reagan, having newly won the presidency, uttered the immortal words, "It's time to get government off the people's backs." He then went on to paint the federal government as a bloated, helpless, inefficient and impotent nuisance, completely overlooking many of the great accomplishments of the past, such as the Manhattan Project and the moon landing.

Instead we were told that private corporations, driven to efficiency and perfection by the profit motive, were the answer. They would reign flawlessly, because they had The Free Market [bow head reverently here] to keep them honest. The gov'ment, meanwhile, was peopled by coffee-break taking, resource-wasting, overpaid and lazy workers who no longer had any incentive to strive for The American Dream.

Thus began a nearly three-decade love affair with chasing profits and markets at the expense of everything else, and deploring government intervention in anything--or at least anything civil. You'll notice the government is still perfectly fine and not wasteful (or at least not alarmingly such) when it comes to waging war, aka foreign policy, imposing the American way of life on other countries (and if you reject it you suddenly are some sort of rogue state with shadily-define weapons and you must be taken out), or propping up what Eisenhower--a military veteran and a Republican no less--so accurately called The Military Industrial Complex.

Need I also point out how well we've done letting the private sector reign almost entirely unregulated? From Enron to big oil to the S&L crisis to the banking and mortgage collapse, we've seen what a great policeman the so-called "free markets" really are. When will it be time to get the private institutions, in the form of public bailouts, off the people's backs?

With Reagan's philosophy and outlook, we'd never have gone to the moon, undertaken the Manhattan Project or completed many other tremendous and ambitious efforts over the last century. Yet he is held up as some sort of great visionary and leader, when he is, no matter how you slice it, the true genesis of our current rot, our current slouching towards mediocrity and defeatism in the face of every challenge. As Europe makes real advances in the fields of alternate energy, conservation, technology and higher standards of living, we keep wringing our hands and pointing fingers at each other as to why we can't agree on even the simplest things anymore. "Government isn't the answer, taxes aren't the answer," Reagan and his followers have been telling us for three decades. Funny, though, it's working elsewhere. Maybe it depends on the quality of your government officials and not the very fact of government itself. What do you say to that, Mr. Reagan, you fucking hypocrite who got rich off of governance, first in Hollywood, where you were never more than a B-actor but very successful Screen Actor's Guild president (governance) and then governor of California and of course, president of the U.S. Funny that a man who thinks so little of government spent nearly his entire life and amassed all his riches in the very field. (By the way, he was also the conservative values president who was divorced as well as estranged from his own kids.) And yet people believed the words that came out of this asshole's mouth.

Remarks at the Bicentennial Observance of the Battle of
Yorktown in Virginia, October 19, 1981

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Another wired day provides various odd perspectives that keep life interesting.

The toilet doesn't flush. An everyday occurrence. Well it just so happens that this one toilet contained a bunch of shredded documents called the Osenberg list, a list of German scientists under the Nazis. A US Army officer tapes them together to form a list of scientists that would be recruited to come to the US to work as scientists after World War II. Well now you know what happened to some of those Nazis! And it all came down to that toilet that wouldn't flush. (see this link)

You're a rich Swiss guy. You wake up one morning and find that- viola! You have an extra ten million dollars in your bank account. Nice huh? Well, you do the right thing and you inform the bank. As it turns out, you got the money that the small southeast Asian country of Brunei had tried to send to Oliver North's Swiss bank account to fund the Contras in Nicaragua after the US Congress had blocked further funding for their guerrilla war against the Sandanistas. All part of a wider effort to fund the Contras which included selling arms to Iran. How did you get all that money? Well, Oliver North's secretary accidentally transposed two numbers in North's bank account number. (see here)

The FBI is spying on vegan potlucks. Hey, I told you those vegetarians are dangerous. Its all part of an FBI strategy to keep an eye on groups planning to demonstrate at the Republican National Convention. (see here) Sounds like COINTELPRO all over again. Hey, go demonstrators! Maybe you'll persuade McCain to give up the war. Have some tofu on my behalf. And don't talk to the cops, they don't speak our language.

There would be a revolution in America, but the true revolutionaries are being held back by their castrating wives. The KGB and British Intelligence used fear of homosexuality and male impotence to brainwash them into giving up the revolution. But the Reagan administration listened to these revolutionaries, even though they blamed all the world's problems on Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller. The Chinese are a lower animal species, the British are a parasitic species, the masses are subhuman, but thankfully, the world will soon be ruled by the "superhumans". These Communists, through their unsolicited intelligence briefs, are revealing scientists involved in a plot to overthrow Middle Eastern governments. Or are they Fascists? Oh, and by the way, Queen Elizabeth is at the head of Jewish control of the international drug trade. Brought to you By Lyndon LaRouche. I'm serious! It was all a conspiracy! (read about it here.) (and here)

Any aliens involved?

But don't worry. The former US Attorney General defended LaRouche in court. And he also defended Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, along with Nazi war criminals and marijuana legalization activists. Then he tried to impeach George Bush. Ramsey Clark

But wait! there's more.... The CIA sold drugs to your neighbor, and the money was used by Harvard to buy back your foreclosed home. Philip Morris smuggled cigarettes to Colombian drug producers, while GE's stock price is propped up by selling TVs and VCRs to drug money launderers in South America. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were elected to office using drug money. NATO invaded Kosovo to liberate the Kosovo Liberation Army's heroin money for Wall Street. But before that Bill Clinton went to Moscow to spy on Americans. Then, later, Clinton avoided impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky scandal by releasing a report showing that Reagan and George Bush, Sr. were dealing drugs. Really! George W. Bush's daddy was a drug dealer! Hey, it's all here.

Oh, and another thing. The Buddha foretold the coming of Mohammed as a supreme enlightened being called Maitreya. Or at least someone thinks so... (see here)

And did I mention that one of my former fellow students believed we may be subject to mind control? (see here)

Well not bad for one day. The FBI is converting to vegetarianism, while Islam is the last in a line of religions going back to Buddhism. But will the FBI convert? The Nazis were recruited into America because a toilet wouldn't flush. Some Swiss guy made 10 million dollars from Oliver North. Reagan got elected using drug money, dealt drugs, and then listened to a bunch of Fascist revolutionaries. Superhumans are taking over the world, you're under mind control, but don't worry, Ramsey Clark will defend you in court. Columbian drug producers are smoking a lot of cigarettes, but the New York Stock Exchange should go up soon. We're all addicts anyway. That's what Queen Elizabeth wanted. And thank God Bill Clinton had that report handy to protect him from the man eating Congress.

COINTELPRO is probably reading this as we speak. Or at least this post will keep the spambots busy... Aliens, look out! We know what you're up to!

The author of this blog is not responsible for factual errors, lies or misrepresentations on the websites linked to this article.

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Inaugural Address
West Front of the U.S. Capitol, January 20, 1981

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One of the great joys of watching the U.S. "superiority" in the world go up in flames is being able to laugh and say "I told you so" to so many people. After 30 years of dittoits worshipping at the tit of the Free Market, that perfect machine that always knows best and can never be questioned, seeing its principles being exposed for the utter con artist scam they are is highly gratifying.

"It's time to get government off our backs," said Ronald Reagan in 1981. The myth Repiglicans created was that government couldn't do anything right, bloated and corruption-prone that was, but the Private Sector [enter choir of angels here] could. A generation later, in the wake of the HP Spying Scandal Adelphia, Enron accounting fraud, involving Arthur Andersen, Exxon overreporting of oil reserves, Fannie Mae underreporting of profit and who currently knows what else, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Halliburton overcharging government contracts, Harken Energy Scandal the Lockheed bribery scandal in Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands , Nortel executives overstate post-dot-com recovery earnings in order to earn bonuses, One.Tel collapse, the Phar-Mor Pharmacy collapse, Refco, Inc. commodities & futures scandal , Rite Aid accounting fraud, Royal Dutch Shell, Tyco International, Worldcom, many others I can't even think of and no doubt dozens I don't even know about, does anyone besides these idiots still think corporations are the answer to our problems of waste and corruption?

Free Markets are a religion, a dogma, a cult, the same as Creationism, Fundamentalism, Christian Science, Faith-Healing, and so many of the other irrationalities that conservative wackos believe in without a shred of proof. For years I read the writings of the corporate apologists of the world, from Harvey Mackay to Jack Welch, and thought these people were self-serving media whores, the modern day equivalent of hedonistic, underperforming megalomaniac rulers who were for the most part tossed off their throne (often without their heads) in the late 18th/early 19th century around the world as people wised up. After such a deposing the world advanced faster and became fairer to a larger number of people more quickly than ever before in history. If ever there was a history lesson to learn something from, that was it. But your average modern American, proud of his 5th grade education and basic functional illiteracy, didn't want to know about history or anything else that might conflict with his worship of Reagan's and the GOP's glorious Free Markets--you know, those institutions chock full of tariffs and lobbyists and special tax exemptions for corporations, courtesy of Congressmen and women who'd rather you not know their fingerprints are attached to bills that bail out the wealthy at your expense. But you needn't dust the bills for fingerprints: just study to what corporate boards said Congresspeople go after their terms expire. That will show you for whom they did the most favors while in office. Funny thing is when someone who's not in office does it, it's called prostitution, if not treason.

And now we're seeing the result of 30 years of Reagan and Bushomics. The only backs the government has gotten off of is big businesses, and the result has been worse than the most liberal "doom and gloomers" ever predicted. As Herb Morrison might have said, "Oh the humanity!" A whole generation of ill-educated dogmatists is starting to realize they're never going to share in those gold-paved streets, a realization Phil Gramm is calling a "mental recession." He should know; he profited from it more than most, at the expense of a bunch of wide-eyed, small-brained once-Young Republicans who are starting to see that that power suit and power tie are about as close as they're ever going to come to the power they were promised by private leaders whose address is now a P.O. box somewhere in the Canary Islands. I'm loving it. Hope we crash to the bottom and the future is bleak for hard-working college-"educated" Americans as Europe and much of the rest of the world---which by the way has relied on "big government" just to outperform us in education, GDP, healthcare, longevity, innovation, R&D, and the rest---pass us in the fast lane of the 21st century. Guess what? We're not nearly as relevant on the world stage as we 1) used to be, and 2) think we are. Our standard of living isn't nearly as high compared to theirs either, but few Americans today realize this because only 20% own a passport and even fewer than that have actually been out of the country even once, Mexico and Canada not counted. We're a nation of provincial morons, and our leaders love us that way. Where's the incentive in our government for a strong dollar if our currently flaccid paper keeps us deaf and dumb to how the rest of the world is advancing?

To paraphrase that GOP and Free Market hero Reagan, Are you better off than you were four presidents ago?

Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the
State of the Union, January 25, 1983

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In my opinion, it's mostly generalities. Be sure to read it though and post a comment if you think something really stands out. Here are a few sections that stand out to me (my comments are in grey):

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers - dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.

[...]

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya. (From what I hear, this is not only an extreme exaggeration - but likely, not true at all. It's certainly not the case in the Antarctic. I mean - that's a huge assumption that cars and factories are directly the cause of world droughts. Call me crazy, but I'd like to see the actual science linking the two.)

[...]

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. (Clarification: "To people of the left in Europe...the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common." This is a media driven myth in my opinion. If what Obama said was true, how was Nicolas Sarkozy, a huge supporter of America, elected in France of all places? The media in America refuses to show people around the world that do support America - mainly because, why would they bother? First, it's not exactly newsworthy, and Second: it doesn't support the news media's narrative that George W. Bush has been the most heinously evil president in the history of the universe.)

[...]

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations - including my own - will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one. (Here again with the catastrophic carbon = death predictions. The other day, our local news failed to predict the weather accurately for a mere 6 hours, and yet you have people making predictions about the climate systems of the entire Earth for the next 100 years... This whole thing just seems like a bit of hysteria to me. Mark Steyn said it best,

 [audio https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/28028/oceansSubside.mp3]

"…he can make the oceans subside, but will he be able to improve border security? I doubt it.")

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please. (Now this is a decent section over all. He is extolling the concept of E Pluribus Unam - which is a great thing about America, as well as our sacrifice, and freedoms of speech and religion. The only odd bit is, 'free from fear and free from want.' Personally, I think it's simply freedom, period.)

Reagan was een man die tot de verbeelding sprak. Hij had een carrière achter de rug als vertegenwoordiger, tv-presentator en acteur voordat hij zijn heil zocht in de politiek. Om op een leeftijd waarop de meeste mensen zeurend en kwijlend achter de geraniums hangen president te worden van het machtigste land ter wereld. De arena was nog overzichtelijk: Amerika was de baas en de communisten moesten ontwapend worden. Of dood. Of allebei. Reagan hield zijn rug recht, sprak de woorden die mensen wilden horen, was charmant en maakte grappen.

Natuurlijk vond ik hem in die periode enorm fout en romantiseer ik het. Maar doen we dat niet allemaal? Nu vertel je mooie verhalen over je vriendin van tien jaar geleden, terwijl je haar toendertijd het liefst met een klauwhamer wilde bewerken. Wat blijft zijn herinneringen, de foto's, videobeelden en in het geval van Reagan ook een kledinglijn, een pratende pop en een replica van Air Force One. Te bestellen bij de enige echte Reaganwinkel.  Ook Obama schijnt onlangs zijn credit card getrokken te hebben. 

http://www.reaganlibrary.com/store/