The one thing I remember about Reagan is that

[bearfan454]

when they were trying to pay for the deficit tripler tax cut back in the 80's, they said ketchup and relish were acceptable vegetables for cutting funding to the childrens school lunch program. That is about as good as bush saying people who work at a burger joint manufacture a product so manufacturing is going up. Bullshit. What do you remember about Reagan ?

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. The great cheese giveaway.

Iran Contra.

The invasion of Grenada. I've been to Grenada twice, the invasion is a joke to them.

[XanaDUer]

2. AHA!

So it was reagan and crew with the ketchup/vegetable stuff.

There was some question of that on another thread.

I remember when Nancy got the fancy China and got criticized...and Sinatra defended her.

Oh, and Ben Vereen in minstral make up at their inauguration party.

That sent a chill down my spine, and I was a teenager when Reagan came into office. I was young, but I knew something bad was coming down.

I also remember our good health insurance going away and being replaced with shitty HMO insurance, that later killed my mother because it was so bad.

Let's hear it for the Gipper.

[david_vincent]

3. What I remember

though it's not about anything he did... when he was elected, some Canadian magazine said that the problem with Reagan "is not that he was an actor, but that he is an actor."
That stuck in my mind, as time passed, as being the most pithy statement I ever saw about him.
Oh, and that whole "Gipper" thing that he just flat out stole. The real George Gipp cheated out of a part of his legacy by an actor... playing the part of a politician.

[bearfan454]

13. He probably had Alzheimers back then too

but his handlers told him what to say just like rove tells bush what to say now.

[NightTrain]

14. It was called "senility" at the time.

That was why when the news of Reagan's Alzheimer's first hit long about 10 years ago, I said to anyone who'd listen, "Some of us knew back in '81 that Reagan had it."

[bearfan454]

15. I think they call it a "senior moment" now.

That's what my parents say. They are both retired in Sun City Fla.

[XanaDUer]

4. And he broke the air traffic controllers' union

I remember that, too.

[bearfan454]

7. Oh ya !

He did fire all of the air traffic controllers.

[XanaDUer]

8. I think that was his fist big move

towards busting the balls of the average American. More, a LOT more, came later.

It's like a stroll down nightmare lane.

[NightTrain]

5. When he visited that soldiers' graveyard in Bitberg, Germany.

Ronnie finally showed that he did, in fact, have some compassion. It was for Nazis! :eyes:

[XanaDUer]

6. I forgot that!

yup.

[crossroads]

10. I remember this

[Beware the Beast Man]

29. Bonzo Goes to Bitburg

Great Ramones tune....Freeper Johnny hated it.

[crossroads]

9. My dad coming home and saying he had to take a $2.80 hr. wage cut...

...he was in a union... $2.80 was a lot of money back then. Reagan hurt union families bad! Also his "trickle down" policys, what a laf!
The 80's were some rough times...
:eyes:

[bearfan454]

11. You aint shitting he hurt union families.

I had a high dollar union job at US Steel at the time. I was making 16.98 an hour back in 1980 plus 5 to 6 hundred bonus on every check. If you waorked at the Steel Mill back then, your wife didn't have to work you made so much, not like now. He refused to stop the imports from flooding our markets from Germany and Japan. So, eventually the Tube Works closed. This one event was one of the main things that instilled in my mind about being a Democrat.

[crossroads]

16. This is the one thing none of us can forget...

:eyes:

[XanaDUer]

12. My mother saying that she was having a harder time

living on her salary (and we were lucky enough to own our modest house) thanks to Reagan's policies.

[Ilsa]

17. Deregulation of banks and interstate banking.

Deregulation allowed bankers to make all kinds of shitty deals for their buddies on the taxpayers' dime (via FDIC) that caused many of the banks to go belly up.

And interstate banking was supposed to save the consumers lots of money by allowing consolidation of banking functions, IOW, loss of jobs. Texas lost about 25,000 good paying banking jobs in the 1980's. One of them had a slogan like "One Nation, One Bank" and we would joke, One nation, one bank, one employee."

[Ilsa]

18. Another one:

Hearing about him sleepng in cabinet meetings.

[Langis]

19. I don't remember a damn thing

I was 8 when I left office.

[NightTrain]

20. On the day of his inauguration, Reagan's aides were shocked to...

...find that he and Nancy were still asleep at 9:00 a.m. When an aide awakened the president-elect and reminded him that it was time for his inauguration, Reagan replied, "Does that mean I have to get up?" :eyes:

[greatauntoftriplets]

21. Eugene Hasenfuss!

http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2001/09/16-antiacademics.html

[NoPasaran]

22. I remember that he made "liberal" a dirty word

I remember that he traded arms for hostages, resulting in more hostages being taken.
I remember that he relied on the advice of Nancy's astrologer for the timing of events.
I remember that when Conhress tried to shut down his war in Nicaragua, he set up a parallel government to circumvent them.
I remember that he allowed the HIV virus to contaminate the nation's blood supply and spread AIDS to thousands of hemophiliacs.
I remember that he remembered liberating the Nazi concentration camps, even though he spent the war in Hollywood.

[Wapsie B]

23. The PATCO strike

and Ronnie's repugs sticking it to the working stiff big time. I remember a banker and CEO talking to me during that time. They said that it's just not fair that a factory worker could have a job making all that money without a college degree in hand. That was one of the rallying cries that brought about Trickle-down. "It's just not fair."

[NMDemDist2]

24. i remember him gutting the Calif. higher education system

just as I was ready to enter college.

I remember him closing mental hospitals and turning the poor crazy people out to live on the streets with out meds (also as gov. of CA)

Reagan was not a good manager for the state of California or for the USA

[liberalhistorian]

25. I remember his total neglect of and

indifference toward the AIDS crisis during its first several years, at a time when action would have easily saved thousands of lives; his subsequent underfunding of the CDC's efforts to fight AIDS and AIDS prevention and treatment efforts wasn't too Christian and humane, either.

I remember his bullshit statement about "welfare queens driving Cadillacs", which was so far from reality as to defy any semblance of reason, and which did tremendous damage to poorer Americans.

I remember his breaking of unions and his stomping on the lives of Americans of more modest means, while boasting that he was bringing a new prosperity to Americans. Yeah, he was, alright, only it was to his corporate and wealthy elite cronies.

I remember a homeless WWII vet freezing to death just a few blocks from one of his megabucks inauguration balls in 1984, while he mouthed endless platitudes about gratitude to vets at the same time he was cutting the VA budget (sound familiar, anyone?).

I remember a horrendous increase in the number of homeless FAMILIES as well as individuals, who were not all "bums" as he and his people claimed, and their tremendous suffering at the hands of those who believed Raygun's rhetoric about how anyone without money was a lazy bum (never mind that he himself came from a poor family).

I remember his perpetuating and ingraining in the culture the notion that those who have money are the most deserving and are better people, regardless of how they got that money, that greed and avarice were good and that the pursuit of money by any means, no matter who you climbed over and fucked over to get it, was not only acceptable but expected, and that those who didn't have money were all lazy bums who deserved their suffering even if they worked very hard.

I remember his lionization of corporations and businesses and his ingraining of the attitude that said corporations and businesses could do no wrong and any wrong they did was the fault of those horrible, greedy, overpaid and underworked workers.

I remember his Central American policies causing the murder and death of thousands of citizens of those countries and his unconscionably callous indifference to that.

I remember his gutting of social safety net programs while claiming to be a humane Christian, and his setting back the progress of women and minorities by decades.

I could go on and on and on, but you get the picture.

[tilsammans]

26. "A prepaid vacation for freeloaders"

That's what he called unemployment compensation. Well, unfortunately, I was unemployed twice during the Reagan years. I did NOT appreciate being considered a "freeloader."

[moof]

27. Him admitting he sold weapons to terrorists and nothing happening to him!!

The view from here looked very much like the same as a traitor.

He also started the thumbing at the world court with the dismissal of the ruling about mining the south American harbours.

[pretzel4gore]

28. KAL 007

the soviets were supposed to, but failed to, knock it down, so a mercenary french pilot(?) did just 20 minute before KAL 007 left Russian airspace.....
it was the 2nd KAL airliner to 'stray' into soviet no-go airspace which was 'shot down' though first one survived somehow....
it ended opposition to the reagan military spending bill in congress, effectively privitising control of our wealth while strapping public with horrendous debts (US nat debt went from 1 trillion at end of carter to 2.6 trillion 8 yrs later)
KAL 007, which supposedly had US nuke forces on Red Alert, the gravest since cuba missile crisis, is TOTALLY FORGOTTEN even here at DU....
the USSR ceased to exist within 7 years of KAL 007 shootdown...
democrat hero Seymore hersh wrote a 'expose' that said the US was trying to provoke the soviets into activating their radar defenses, without explaining why/how a modern jet could stray 300 miles offcourse over several hours into deadliest airspace on earth (??) w/out Japan ATC, Alaska ATC or the RUSSIANS THEMSELVES! saying a darn word about it ....
KAL 007 was electroniclly hijacked, and the world media (the 'fairness doctorine still existed) was put through their paces selling what was obviously nonsense in a way that made sept 11th 18 years later a piece of cake...
of course, KAL 007 shootdown never happened (the 20th anniversary of an event which dominated news for weeks in 1983 passed w/out comment in mainstream media in 2003)
There's so much bushit about KAL 007 that, like the JFK murder, it's best to ignore the doctored record and just say 'cui bono' (who benefits) and take it from there....
the bush criminals were ONLY benefitiaries, just like 911

[AwakeAtLast]

30. When he said to someone, "Aww, shut up!"

I think it was a debate, maybe? Hey, I was only 9 when he was elected. I'm surprised I remember anything political from that time.

[Ivan Sputnik]

31. Didn't he also say

that trees cause pollution?