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Edited on Sun Jun-13-04 08:06 PM by seventhson
The case against the Reagan presidency can be made from his own words. Thus, "setting the record straight" from this week of hero worship insanity is necessary if we are to forge a different future.
Prior to his Presidency :
"... a faceless mass, waiting for handouts." -- Reagan, '65, describing Medicaid recipients.
"Today a newcomer to the state is automatically eligible for our many aid programs the moment he crosses the border." -- Reagan, '66. In fact, immigrants to California had to wait five years before becoming eligible for benefits. Reagan later acknowledged his error, but repeated the same thing nine months later.
"For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons." -- Reagan, '71
"A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?" -- Reagan '66, opposing the expansion of Redwood National Park
"Hollywood has no blacklist." -- Reagan, '60. FBI records have since shown that this was a lie, and that Reagan personally informed (to the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee) on several actors later shown to be innocent, destroying their careers in the process.
"I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964." -- Reagan, '66 (He never changed his mind. He tried to prevent the Act's renewal during his presidency. Congress had to override his veto.)
"A small minority of beatniks, radicals, and filthy speech advocates ... brought such shame to a great university." -- Reagan, '66, complaining about student protests against Vietnam on the Berkeley campus.
"If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with." -- (Reagan, '69, prior to having national guard soldiers break up a peaceful protest on the UC Berkeley campus. The protesters were tear-gassed and fired upon with buckshot, killing one protester and wounding at least 128 others. )
"... a tragic illness." -- Reagan, '67, desribing homosexuality. (When two of his aides were found to be gay that year, he asked for their resignations.)
"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal.." -- Reagan, '76
"Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine." -- Reagan, in a speech he gave to a crowd in Atlanta, GA.
"... humiliating to the South ..." -- Reagan, '80, describing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, arguably the primary legislative victory for blacks during the Civil Rights movement.
"I believe in states' rights ..." -- Reagan, '80, in a speech in Philadelphia, MS (at the Neshoba County Fair, infamous for racist speeches by politicians), a town infamous for the murder of three civil rights workers in '64 (Goodman, Schwerner, & Cheney). "States rights" was used in the South as a code word indicating support of Jim Crow laws. In that same speech (the speech which launched his presidential campaign) he said that this town embodied the true spirit of America!
"80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees." -- Reagan, '79 (This is still a personal favorite.)
As President :
"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" — Reagan, '80
"Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything." -- Reagan, '80
"There is today in the United States as much forest as there was when Washington was at Valley Forge." -- Reagan, '83
"I have flown twice over Mount St Helens out on our west coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about." -- Reagan, '80. (At its peak, Mt. St. Helens released 1/40th as much sulfur dioxide as cars do every day.)
"I've said it before and I'll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia." -- Reagan, '80. Saudi Arabia's oil reserves are approximately 17 times those of Alaska.
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk." -- Reagan, '80. (In fact, a single nuclear power plant can produce up to 22,000 cubic feet of of radioactive waste per year.)
"I have a smiling fellow at the end of the table who tells me what we do." -- Reagan, '81, on how budget decisions are made.
"I never knew anything above C's." -- Reagan, '81, describing his academic record.
"I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself." -- Reagan, during the latter years of his administration.
"He wrote in Braille to tell me that if cutting his pension would help get this country back on its feet, he'd like to have me cut his pension." -- Reagan, '81, in reference to a supposed blind person who wrote him a letter. After reporter inquiries, no such letter was ever shown to have existed.
"Facts are stupid things." -- Reagan, '88
"We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education and the decline in profit over recent years." -- Reagan, '83
"They turned out the lights. That tells me I can't talk anymore." -- Reagan, '85, dodging reporters questions.
"It would be a user fee ..." -- Reagan, '82, explaining how a five cent a gallon tax on gasoline isn't actually a tax.
"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform for four years myself." -- Reagan, '85, justifying laying a wreath at a Nazi cemetery in Bitburg. (Reagan spent WW II in Hollywood, making films.)
"They haven't been there. I have." Reagan, '85, justifying his policies on Nicaragua. (Ronald Reagan had never visited Nicaragua. Many of the people to whom he was referring -- members of Witness for Peace and the Pledge of Resistance, HAD been there and testified before Congress as to what they had seen.)
"They have eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country ..." -- Reagan, '85, praising the government of P.W. Botha in South Africa, during the height of apartheid.
"They've done away with those committees. That shows the success of what the Soviets were able to do in this country." -- Reagan, '87, defending McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee.
"In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn't use it, he was not tried for burglary or theft or whatever he was doing. He was tried for first degree murder and hung if he was found guilty" -- Reagan, '82. (Later admitted by White House Spokesman Larry Speakes to be untrue.)
"I never wear (makeup). I didn't wear it when I was in pictures." -- Reagan, '84. (This laughable statement was promptly disputed and soundly proven false the very next day by G.E. Theater makeup man Howard Smith, Death Valley Days makeup man Del Acevedo, and debate panelist James Weighart, as well as Mayor Edward Bergin, recalling a recent presidential visit to Connecticut.) (Reagan also repeatedly denied dying his hair!)
"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." -- Reagan, '84 (off-the-air jest caught by a journalist)
"I cannot recall anything whatsoever about whether I approved an Israeli sale in advance, or whether I approved replenishment of Israeli stocks around August of 1985. My answer therefore, and the simple truth, is 'I don't remember, period'." -- Reagan, Feb. '87
"They are the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers." -- Reagan, '85, referring to the brutal 'Contras' his administration secretly and illegally funded in Nicaragua -- counter-revolutionary terrorists in Nicaragua, who indiscriminately attacked civilians.
"Mr. President, why don't we openly support those 7,000 guerillas that are in rebellion rather than giving aid through covert activity?" "Well, because we want to keep on obeying the laws of our country, which we are now obeying." "Doesn't the United States want that government replaced?" "No, because that would be a violation of the law." -- Reagan, ''87. (At the time of the press conference, the U.S. was giving the indiscriminately murderous Contra terrorists covert aid, in direct violation of the law. Reagan's lie was so obvious that members of the press corps laughed loudly and openly at his statements.)
"If the question comes up at the Tower Board meeting, you might want to say that you were surprised." -- Reagan, '87, accidentally reading the notes for his stage directions aloud which told him to act surprised should the issue of arms-for-hostages come up.
"A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not." -- Reagan, Mar. '87
"... an example to the world of the ideals we hold most dear, the ideals of freedom and independence." -- Reagan, '85, praising the Afghan Mujaheddin. These "freedom fighters" later became prominent leaders of Al Qaeda, including Osama Bin Laden, as well as many of the leaders for the Taliban.
"Maybe the Lord brought down this plague illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments." -- Reagan, '89. (Reagan didn't even mention AIDS until 1987, by which time over 25,000 Americans had died of the disease, and it had spread into the heterosexual population.)
"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice" -- Reagan, '84.
"We're not building missiles to fight a war -- we're building missiles to preserve the peace." -- Reagan, '84, a remark which accompanied the naming of a new model of nuclear-weapon-carrying ballistic missiles as "peacekeepers", an action which inspired folksinger Tracy Chapman's famous lyric, "Why are the missiles called peacekeepers when they're aimed to kill?"
"Catsup is a vegetable." -- Reagan '83, responding to criticisms that his cutting of the federal school lunch program would deny poorer kids a chance to eat healthy food.
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