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| 5/19 |
| 2004/6/11-12 [Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:30751 Activity:insanely high |
6/11 Would any Dems or Reps disagree:
RR > GB > GWB
\_ I'd say GB > RR > GWB -liberal
\_ I agree. GHWB was much more of a pragmatist, and much less of
an ideologue than the other two. I didn't agree with a lot of
his policies, but his presidency didn't fill me with terror.
\_ The man was head of the friggin' CIA!! What the fuck is
wrong with you? Pramatist? You mean the way it's ok to
just fucking shoot someone in the head if you don't like
their political philosophy?!
\_ Yes, he was a republican and a cold warrior with cia
roots, but he also understood the value of diplomacy.
And on the economy, he said "no new taxes" but when it
came down to it, he wasn't willing to bankrupt the
country the way his half-witted son is doing. It may be
largely subjective, but, like I said, as much as I
disliked him and his party, he just didn't scare me
like Bonzo or Dumbya.
\_ So he was a vicious bastard, a killer, a thug, and he
was the King VB,K,T for a few years before becoming
President and you think that's ok because he raised
taxes? You're nuts.
\_ calm down.
\_ I'm calm. You're praising a thug.
\_ so how would you order the three?
\_ GWB > RR > GB. GWB and RR never ordered anyone
to be murdered.
\_ I didn't agree with him, but I could respect his point of
view and way of doing things.
\_ In what way did he do things? What are you talking about?
\_ at least GHWB saw some real action - got shot down by
japanese plane.
\_ GB , RR >> GWB -liberal
\_ RR >>> GB + GWB - moderate
\_ Has anybody else noticed that in the beginning of the last century
we had 3 persidents with alliterative names? WW, CC and HH.
Were alliterative baby names a fad in the mid 1800's?
\_ You have discovered our secret! Now you must die!
\_ RR > GWB > GB -conservative
\_ agreed, except RR >>>>>> others -another conservative
\_ Agreed. -- ilyas
\_ what makes GWB > GB?
\_ GB was a flip floppy wishy washy man that no one liked for
good reason. GWB is nothing like his father. That makes
him better than his father in this case.
\_ Take away the propaganda, and what you're left with is
left hand amputed > deaf > blind. The choices already suck.
\_ More like lobotomy in the current case.
\_ Yeah, he's a real dumbshit. So how is it that this dumbshit
has control of all 3 branches of government? How much more
stupid are your guys if they let him do this?
\_ America wants small government and protection for the
homeland. America thinks you need more guts than brains
for this task. Think Kerry: brains (maybe), no guts.
\_ He got elected during a time of peace. Security was low
on the list and "homeland" wasn't in the vocabulary yet.
\_ The economist article on Reagan was great. "Clearly the
man was no intellectual. Yet surprisingly, he was the man
for the job." Lenin was an intellectual. Sometimes I
wonder if we need less intellectuals in govenment. -- ilyas
\_ Did the economist fail to read Reagan's papers? Must
be or they just had an axe to grind.
\_ nah, lenin was an ideologue, just like RR and GB.
\_ Lenin was an intellectual.
\_ You would.
\_ No one wants an "intellectual" as President, when
you could have a "strong leader" instead. But,
everyone wants an "intelligent" leader.
Big difference.
everyone wants an "intelligent" leader. Big
difference. And even though I completely disagree,
nearly all Republicans would say that Bush is
intelligent.
\_ No. I would say Bush is a somewhat above average
"Joe" kind of guy who follows through on what he
says. No one can pin the "wishy washy" label on
the man. Sometimes in life it is better to just
*do* something, even if it is the wrong thing than
sit on your ass wondering what to do. Doing
nothing is often the worst option. We call it
'leadership' when you decide *before* seeing the
poll results what you're going to do.
\_ But it's not so good when you decide without
considering the long-term consequences. This
kind of "leadership" is like that of the
first lemming leading the others over a cliff.
\_ I said "sometimes". And yes "sometimes" it
is better to act immediately than ponder the
longer term consequences becausing pausing
to do so takes time during which things may
get even worse than whatever your long term
consequences were from the initial decision.
It also means not going all wiggly when the
rubber hits the road and things don't go
perfectly. In real life they never do. A
man who understands that has leadship
potential.
\_ Reagan "glazed over in meetings" and let his aides write
all his speeches and make policy decisions. I'm not sure
these are admirable leadership traits. The economic
policy of huge tax cuts, increased spending, and
increased payroll taxes makes little sense to me. If you
believe in small government you should cut the services,
not shovel the debt into the future.
\_ Yes, it's true. You have discovered that he was
suffering from Alzheimers in his last years. This
may come as a shock to you, but the rest of us knew
it at the time.
\_ My officemate and I are TAing a class for my advisor.
He basically lets us handle most of the decisions for
the class, including grading, the kind of midterm to
give, etc. Does this mean he is a bad teacher or
not intelligent? Reagan's spending was mostly
military, and I would say they were due to specific
international circumstances at the time. His record
wasn't perfect, but as The Economist noted, Reagan
was a libertarian at heart. -- ilyas
\_ You guys got everything all mixed up.
Dubya is The Great Delegator.
\_ I don't consider big tax-cut + big spending to be
an example of leadership. It's the easy way out.
It's just ignoring reality. Whatever Reagan was at
heart he never consistently applied it to policy.
From the article: "...spent much of his presidency
compromising the free-market principles...", "one
of the more protectionist American presidents".
Add to that his lying about Iran-Contra. I don't
think any of this points to strong principles.
I consider Truman the greatest 20th century
president by the way. That was a guy who had
both capability and responsibility, who actually
led rather than function as a figurehead. "The
buck stops here."
\_ lied about iran contra? next you'll say the
actions in central america were evil. you
know, freeing the people from the evil
sandinistas? yeah much better to let that
shit continue and allow the ussr to establish
a base in our hemisphere. brilliant.
\_ so it's ok for the president to knowingly
break laws passed by Congress as well as
U.N. sanctions, as long as it's for the
noble cause of aiding guerilla death
squads against a democratically-elected
government and appeasing Iranian terrorists
who were at war with Iraq who we supported.
Brilliant! Oh and the lying, piff.
\_ Break laws? Name the law. And yes it
is absolutely ok for the President to
ignore the UN. You're a bit confused
about who was running Nicaragua at the
time. You're aware that the now truly
democratic governments that have been
elected since then are all very pro-US
and very very happy that the US saved
them back then? We're talking here about
governments elected by the now free
Nicaraguan people. Free people who keep
re-electing pro-democracy, pro-US
governments? Maybe you think they'd
prefer to get the sandinistas back or
miss those butchers at all? They only
miss their dead relatives killed by the
illegal sandinista government.
\_ sheesh, might wanna work on that
signal to noise ratio re: nicaragua.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista
And ignoring the U.N. is one thing.
But when the United States happens to
be signatory to international treaties
including accepting the U.N. charter
then it's not the president's prerog-
ative to violate them.
\_ Which propaganda is that?
\_ Right-wing == corporate media propaganda
Clinton-haters, Bush-lovers
Left-wing == traditional liberal media
Clinton-lovers, Bush-haters
\_ So the right = propaganda, the left = goodness++? Okey!
Glad you cleared that up in an unbiased and rational way. |
| 5/19 |
|
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista Augusto Csar Sandino (1895-1934), a leader in the country's nationalist rebellion against the United States military occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920s and early 1930s until his assassination by the US-created Guardia Nacional (National Guard) enabled Somoza to seize control of the country. The earthquake killed 20,000 of the city's 400,000 residents and left another 250,000 homeless. Somoza's National Guard stole much of the international aid that flowed into the country to assist in reconstruction, and much of downtown Managua was never rebuilt. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the FSLN's leaders internal disagreements over strategy and tactics were reflected in three main factions: * The guerra popular prolongada ("prolonged popular war") faction was rural-based and sought long-term "silent accumulation of forces" within the country's large peasant population, which it saw as the main social base for the revolution. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, was ideologically eclectic, favoring a more rapid insurrectional strategy in alliance with diverse sectors of the country, including business owners, churches, students, the middle class, unemployed youth and the inhabitants of shantytowns. The terceristas also helped attract popular and international support by organizing a group of prominent Nicaraguan professionals, business leaders, and clergymen (known as "the Twelve"), who called for Somoza's removal and sought to organize a provisional government from Costa Rica. Pedro Joaqun Chamorro, who edited the anti-Somoza newspaper La Prensa, sparked a broad uprising against the regime, with the Sandinistas leading a combination of general strikes, urban uprisings and rural guerrilla attacks that increasingly demoralized the National Guard. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of Pedro Joaqun Chamorro. The preponderance of power, however, remained with the Sandinistas and their mass organizations, including the Sandinista Workers' Federation (Central Sandinista de Trabajadores), the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Nicaraguan Women's Association (Asociacin de Mujeres Nicaragenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza) and the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (Unin Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos). Upon assuming power, their political platform included the following: * Nationalization of property owned by the Somozas and their collaborators. Especially in the early days following the overthrow of Somoza, the CDSs served as de facto units of local governance, distributing food rations, organizing neighborhood cleanup and recreational activities, and policing to control looting and apprehend remnants of the National Guard. Contra war, they also organized civilian defense efforts against contra attacks. Critics of the Sandinistas decried the CDS as a system of local spy networks for the government. By 1980, conflicts began to emerge between the Sandinista and non-Sandinista members of the governing junta. Violeta Chamorro and Alfonso Robelo resigned from the governing junta in 1980, and the governing role of the Sandinistas became obvious. Ronald Reagan began organizing remnants of Somoza's National Guard into guerrilla bands known as "Contras" that conducted terrorist attacks on economic and civilian targets. During the Contra war, the Sandinistas arrested suspected Contras and censored La Prensa as well as other publications that they accused of collaborating with the US and the Contras to destabilize the country. Unlike the Cuban revolution, however, the Sandinista government practiced political pluralism throughout its time in power. A broad range of new political parties emerged to take advantage of freedoms that had not existed under Somoza. Although several opposition parties boycotted the election and it was denounced by Reagan as "a sham", it was endorsed as free and fair by numerous international observers. Because of its opposition to the Sandinista revolution, the insurgency became known as the "Contras" (an abbreviation of contrarrevolucionario) and were considered terrorists by the Sandinista government and seen as a US proxy army. The US Central Intelligence Agency, which oversaw the Contra operation, eventually admitted that the Contras "engaged in kidnapping, extortion and robbery to fund its operations", "engaged in the bombing of Nicaraguan civilian airliners and airliner hijackings as methods of attacking the Sandinista Government", as well as drug smuggling to finance their activities. Washington Office on Latin America documented numerous murders of civilians and other human rights violations by Contras, who avoided engaging the Sandinista army in favor of soft targets such as farms aimed at disrupting the economy and Nicaraguan society. There are also allegations that the US government incited Contra attacks on civilians. The Contra war unfolded differently in the northern and southern zones of Nicaragua. Unlike western Nicaragua, which is Spanish-speaking, the Atlantic Coast is predominantly English-speaking and was largely ignored by the Somoza regime. The costeos did not participate in the uprising against Somoza and viewed Sandinismo with suspicion from the outset. Miskito from their land as well as killing or imprisoning indigenous people suspected of collaborating with contras. On two separate occasions in 1981 and 1982, Sandinista troops committed massacres in which dozens of indigenous people were killed and buried in common graves. htm) In the mid-1980s, however, the Sandinista government acknowledged errors in its dealings with the Atlantic Coast and successfully negotiated an end to the southern front of the Contra war. In fulfillment of the terms of that negotiation, the Nicaraguan National Assembly unanimously passed an Autonomy Law in 1987 that made Nicaragua the first American nation to recognize its multiethnic nature, guaranteeing the economic, cultural, linguistic and religious rights demanded by the indigenous groups of the Atlantic Coast. According to Amnesty International, political prisoners in Sandinista prisons, such as in Las Tejas, were beaten, deprived of sleep and tortured with electric shocks. They were denied food and water and kept in dark cubicles that had a surface of less than one square meter, known as chiquitas ("little ones"). UNO's candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, replaced Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua. After their loss, some of the Sandinista leaders held part of the property that had been nationalized by the FSLN government. Daniel Ortega remained the head of the FSLN, but his brother Humberto resigned from the party and remained at the head of the Sandinista Army, becoming a close confidante and supporter of Chamorro. The party also experienced a number of internal divisions, with prominent Sandinistas such as Ernesto Cardenal and Sergio Ramrez resigning to protest what they described as heavy-handed domination of the party by Daniel Ortega. |