Ronald Reagan - Prophet

[Plasmaball]

suck that deadman's dick frank!
Bow for your messiah!

 

[Valox]

You mean Reagan who exempted many low income people from paying low income taxes in which modern day Republican viciously attack?

 

[HUGGY]

Reagan spanked Gorby and the USSR so badly all the American Left has is insults.

Good Job, Ronny!

Really? What movie was that in?...I missed it.

 

[tooAlive]

We have received this progressive tax direct from Karl Marx, who designed it as the prime essential of a socialist state.”

He was right.

 

[Bfgrn]

47 MILLION…the number of Americans for whom Medicare provides comprehensive health care

51 PERCENT…the number of Americans 65 or older who did not have health care before Medicare was passed, while today virtually all elderly Americans have health care thanks to Medicare

30 PERCENT…the number of elderly Americans who lived in poverty before Medicare, a number now reduced to 7.5 PERCENT

72 PERCENT…the number of Americans in a recent poll who said that Medicare is “extremely” or “very” important to their retirement security

Medicare assures health care for seniors who might otherwise find health care inaccessible. It saves our government money. It makes the lives of our seniors better.

Two concepts inspired Medicare. First, seniors require more care than younger Americans. Second, seniors usually live on less income; many survive only on Social Security. This combination renders seniors extremely vulnerable to losing their savings, homes or lives from easily treatable diseases.

And Medicare provides good care. American life expectancy at birth ranks 30th in the world. We remain 30th for the rest of our lives -- until we reach 65. Then, our rank rises until we reach 14th at 80. We can thank the remarkable access to health care provided by Medicare.

Every industrialized nation guarantees health care for seniors. Indeed, we are unhappily distinctive in being the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee care for everyone else, as well. Medicare restores us to a civilized status.

Before Medicare, only 40 percent of nonworking seniors had health insurance, and of those with coverage, private insurance paid for less than 10 percent of their hospital bills. The principle of insuring only the healthy who consume little care and avoiding the sick has always driven our private insurance industry. No insurance company can make money by offering the same comprehensive, affordable coverage to seniors as Medicare, so they don't offer it. Our experience with Medicare Advantage, an effort to privatize parts of Medicare, resulted in our government spending $17 billion more for the same benefits available through Medicare. Our private insurance industry was in no hurry to insure seniors before Medicare started. They are in no hurry now. Medicare revolutionized health care access for seniors.

Why is Medicare expensive? Simply, health care for seniors will always cost more than that of healthier, younger Americans. And costs are rising in every health care system around the world, not just Medicare. The United States is doubly cursed because our costs are rising faster and are already twice as expensive as other countries. Though hard to believe, Medicare is a leader in fighting cost increases. Private insurance industry costs are rising nearly twice as fast as those of Medicare. And when it comes to administrative expenses, private insurance is 10 times higher than Medicare. In fact, if the single payer financing of Medicare were applied to citizens of all ages, we would save $350 billion annually, more than enough to provide comprehensive health care to every American.

Medicare is good for our seniors and good for our country. It provides health care far more affordably and efficiently than our private insurance industry. It saves our country hundreds of billions of dollars in administrative overhead. And if we expand Medicare to cover younger, healthier Americans, we would all get more care at less cost.

More

 

[rdean]

But Nancy did dress well.

He wasn't a very good actor, either.

 

[CrotchetyGeezer]

I was reading this opinion article:

Ronald Reagan's warning on progressive taxes - Conservative News

And it put me onto this speech by Ronald Reagan, given in 1961 while Reagan was still an actor:

Encroaching Control - Reagan Speeches

It is genuinely fascinating how Mr. Reagan, using only common sense and logic (one presumes, at least, that he was not a prophet in the true sense, and delivering directives straight from the Almighty, although I could be wrong about that), so accurately predicted what came to pass in our country. Leftists today are so busy framing the arguments as though the current state of things has ALWAYS pertained that most people forget that there was once an argument about implementing the programs the left takes for granted now as the basis for the NEW programs they want. And if people don't remember the argument, then they obviously don't remember that the left was WRONG.

That's always the problem with arguing with the left: their attention span is so damned short that by the time they've been proven wrong, they've conveniently forgotten that the debate was even happening.

“Not too long ago, Norman Thomas, six times a candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, commented that ‘the American people would never knowingly vote for socialism but that under the name of liberalism, they would adopt every fragment of the socialist program.’”

“Traditionally, one of the easiest first steps in imposing socialism on a people has been government-paid medicine. It is the easiest to present as a humanitarian project. No one wants to oppose care for the sick.”

Mind you, this was four years before Medicare was implemented. (Yes, I know, you lefties thought Medicare was established with the signing of the Constitution, but it actually wasn't.)

“It is now proposed that all people of Social Security age be given government paid medical and hospital care,” said Reagan. “Once again, emergency is invoked, and we are given a picture of millions of senior citizens desperately needing medical care and unable to finance it. In all the emotional presentation, the backers of this program seem strangely reluctant to face the facts.”

“As near as can be determined,” he said, “less than 10 percent of our senior citizens require aid in meeting their medical needs.”

Reagan pointed out that this 10% of senior citizens was being used to force ALL seniors into a compulsory healthcare program, whether they needed - or wanted - it or not.

“Why? Well, ex-Congressman (Aime) Forand provides the answer. He says, ‘If we can only break through and get our foot in the door, then we can expand the program after that.’”

As we know now, that's exactly what happened. Medicare became the law of the land, with leftists pooh-poohing warnings like Reagan's as "hyperbole". And as we also know, Reagan and the other naysayers were correct, and the leftists were WRONG: senior citizens did NOT get to keep their health insurance if they already had it. And now, here we are with Obamacare, and it's the same damned argument all over again, and the left has blissfully forgotten that they already used this arguments before, were WRONG then, and will be wrong this time.

Reagan applied the same prophesying to Social Security (No, leftists, Social Security has NOT been the natural order of things since Cro-Magnon Man), predicting that the program would grow and grow and become so monstrous that eventually, younger Americans would end up being taxed just to cover its deficits, with no hope of EVER seeing any return on that money themselves. Sound familiar to anyone else?

While he was at it, Reagan took a prophetic swipe at the progressive tax, as well, pointing out that there were already handpicked leftist economists attempting to redefine as "loopholes" legitimate deductions such as property taxes and charitable deductions. In 1961, that redefinition was considered preposterous. Now, in 2012, we have a President poised to make it cold, hard reality.

Have you seen any of the comments he made with respect to Hollywood and the communists and socialism in Hollywood, when he was an actor? He was spot on.

 

[CrotchetyGeezer]

Ronald Reagan? That fellow that cut down all the trees in his yard cause he said communists were hiding behind them?

Really? You got the link? Further, he was probably right about that...too.

 

[CrotchetyGeezer]

We went from a creditor nation under Reagan to a debtor one.

You got something to back this up? This nation has been in debt more than it has not been in debt and was in debt under Carter, under Slick and, now under Obama. Give us some more of your stories. There's barely a time this nation has NOT been in debt, fibber.

 

[auditor0007]

i knew he had alzheimer's, but i didn't realize it was early onset.

sad

Reagan would be considered a RINO at best today. He just raised taxes too many times.

 

[CrotchetyGeezer]

yes, Ronny Raygun did it all by himself.

Actually, he DID do it all by himself. I don't know if you were around then, or paying attention if you were, but the Democrats fought Reagan at every turn. His popularity and effectiveness made the liberals crazy, and their efforts to make him fail drove them to do some very unpatriotic things (like side with the Soviets in arms negotiations). I love how the Dems now try to claim that the defeat of the Soviet empire was a bi-partisan effort. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Leftists are the biggest fabricators on the face of the planet. I mean, after all, they're the ones who can, through linguistic ju jitsu, claim the racist Democrats of yesteryear are the Republicans today; global warming is in fact global cooling; Republicans are the ones who start wars, even though WWI, WWII, Vietnam, the Korean War and several other wars started under Democrat administrations; liberals are responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union and, all sorts of other BS. Their revisionist gymnastics are astonishing. And, what's even more astonishing is how they manage to get folks to actually believe the horse shit they vomit. Probably ten to fifteen years from now, leftists will convince everyone Jimmy Carter was a died-in-the-wool Republican and Ronald Reagan was a progressive liberal. At least, that is, as long as they feel it will benefit them.

 

[CrotchetyGeezer]

Ronald Reagan - The last "real" President of The United States.

The Real Reagan Legacy

​

The Real Obama Legacy

 

[Bfgrn]

We went from a creditor nation under Reagan to a debtor one.

You got something to back this up? This nation has been in debt more than it has not been in debt and was in debt under Carter, under Slick and, now under Obama. Give us some more of your stories. There's barely a time this nation has NOT been in debt, fibber.

Before Ronald Reagan, debt wasn't even part of our lexicon.

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Ronbo Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade??? When Bush was starting a 3 trillion dollar war of ideology in Iraq, there was not a PEEP from you right wingers, just cheers and 'bring 'em on'... And where was this less government mantra? You right wingers LOVED BIG government and government intervention into people lives... the Patriot Act, trashing habeas corpus, dismissing the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

And what was the concern in the Bush administration about debt and deficits? NONE...Bush's solution was to eliminate the voices of concern.

Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.

But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

"Cheney, at this moment, showed his hand. He said to O'Neill: 'You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.' … O'Neill was speechless."

"It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society," says O'Neill. "And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction."

 

[CrotchetyGeezer]

We went from a creditor nation under Reagan to a debtor one.

You got something to back this up? This nation has been in debt more than it has not been in debt and was in debt under Carter, under Slick and, now under Obama. Give us some more of your stories. There's barely a time this nation has NOT been in debt, fibber.

Before Ronald Reagan, debt wasn't even part of our lexicon.

Really? Why don't you try posting a chart that goes a little farther back in time?

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Military spending is where most of the debt came from, whether it have been in the past, during Ronald Reagan, or now. And then, of course, these days debt accrued from military spending is pretty much outshined by debt accrued through social programs.

However, if you want to know where the debt came from? This might give you an idea.

- Transfer to state and local

- Federal direct spending

- State direct spending

- Local direct spending

- Transfer to state and local

- Federal direct spending

- State direct spending

- Local direct spending

- Transfer to state and local

- Federal direct spending

- State direct spending

- Local direct spending

- Transfer to state and local

- Federal direct spending

- State direct spending

- Local direct spending

- Transfer to state and local

- Federal direct spending

- State direct spending

- Local direct spending

- Transfer to state and local

- Federal direct spending

- State direct spending

- Local direct spending

- Transfer to state and local

- Federal direct spending

- State direct spending

Ronbo Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills.

Back this claim up. If we're in debt, that means there isn't enough tax revenue to pay the bills and money has to be borrowed. And, again, the United States has been in debt more than it has not. If there is tax revenue to pay the bills, we wouldn't be in debt...fabricating clown.

The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

And, by the end of four years under your punk-in-chief, the national debt will likely skyrocket to or very close to $17 trillion. I think that's a little more than "quadruple". So, your punk-in-chief has accomplished more in four years than Reagan-Bush did in twelve. LOL! Further, the Reagan-Bush administrations is equal to sixteen years, not twelve. And, in actuality -- if we want to be honest about all this -- when combining how much debt increased under Reagan and, how much debt increased under Bush, up until September 2009 (Bush's last budget) that would be an increase of about $2.1 trillion under Reagan -- going from about $1.1 trillion in September 1982 (Reagan's first budget) to $3.2 trillion in September 1990 (Reagan's last budget) and, an increase of about $5.7 trillion under Bush -- going from about $6.2 trillion in September 2002 (Bush's first budget) to $11.9 trillion in September 2009 (Bush's last budget). So, add those up and it would be about $7.8 trillion. Now, if we go from the $11.9 trillion in Bush's last budget, the day before Obama's first budget began until Obama's last budget for his first four years, which will be in September 2013, it's estimated the federal debt will be about $17.5 trillion. So, that will be an increase of $5.6 trillion from the last day of Bush's budget (the day before Obama's first budget) until the last day of Obama's budget for his first four years which will transpire in September 2013. So, that will be only about $2.2 trillion short, in four years, of being equal to that amount Reagan-Bush accrued in sixteen years. So, you just simply have no standing to be giving sermons about how much Reagan and Bush increased the debt...fool.

And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade??? When Bush was starting a 3 trillion dollar war of ideology in Iraq, there was not a PEEP from you right wingers, just cheers and 'bring 'em on'... And where was this less government mantra? You right wingers LOVED BIG government and government intervention into people lives... the Patriot Act, trashing habeas corpus, dismissing the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

Yeah, yeah, yeah...keep bringing up that "3 trillion dollar war of ideology in Iraq" meme. As demonstrated by the chart above, military spending spiked somewhat from 2000 until the end of the chart. However, healthcare, pensions and other spending charts shown above? They demonstrate significant increases in spending. Furthermore, you're obviously confused on the intended primary role of the government as intended by the founding fathers. Here's a clue. It wasn't welfare for the poor or free healthcare for everyone. It was the defense of this nation and its security. And, lastly, no dismissal of the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. War Crimes Act transpired. Save that meme for impressionable 10-year-olds who might actually buy your tripe.

And what was the concern in the Bush administration about debt and deficits? NONE...Bush's solution was to eliminate the voices of concern.

Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.

But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

"Cheney, at this moment, showed his hand. He said to O'Neill: 'You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.' … O'Neill was speechless."

"It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society," says O'Neill. "And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction."

Blah, blah, blah...fecking blah. And, even...yadda, yadda, yadda. (yawn)

And, here's the source for the charts demonstrated above.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/

And, here's the source for the figures given for debt amounts during Reagan, Bush and Obama.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm

 

[Claudette]

yes, Ronny Raygun did it all by himself.

Actually, he DID do it all by himself. I don't know if you were around then, or paying attention if you were, but the Democrats fought Reagan at every turn. His popularity and effectiveness made the liberals crazy, and their efforts to make him fail drove them to do some very unpatriotic things (like side with the Soviets in arms negotiations). I love how the Dems now try to claim that the defeat of the Soviet empire was a bi-partisan effort. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I agree. RR wasn't perfect. Who the hell is?

One thing is for sure though. He was way better and smarter than the current dumbfuck in the WH. His polices worked and he got the country up and running after the other dumbfuck, Carter, screwed the pooch.

 

[Bfgrn]

You got something to back this up? This nation has been in debt more than it has not been in debt and was in debt under Carter, under Slick and, now under Obama. Give us some more of your stories. There's barely a time this nation has NOT been in debt, fibber.

Before Ronald Reagan, debt wasn't even part of our lexicon.

Really? Why don't you try posting a chart that goes a little farther back in time?

My chart goes back to 1940, before WWII.

FDR, and succeeding presidents paid down the debt accrued by the Great Depression, WWII and any other government spending you want to post a chart for...UNTIL Reagan.

 

[CrotchetyGeezer]

Before Ronald Reagan, debt wasn't even part of our lexicon.

Really? Why don't you try posting a chart that goes a little farther back in time?

My chart goes back to 1940, before WWII.

FDR, and succeeding presidents paid down the debt accrued by the Great Depression, WWII and any other government spending you want to post a chart for...UNTIL Reagan.

Oh, well big fucking whoop! FDR and succeeding presidents also increased debt during periods of their presidency as well. Furthermore, according to your chart, you're full of shit and FDR didn't pay squat down. He was dead by that time...dipshit. Truman would have been the one paying it down. According to the chart you posted, the debt didn't start going down until 1946...dumbass!

 

[Bfgrn]

Really? Why don't you try posting a chart that goes a little farther back in time?

My chart goes back to 1940, before WWII.

FDR, and succeeding presidents paid down the debt accrued by the Great Depression, WWII and any other government spending you want to post a chart for...UNTIL Reagan.

Oh, well big fucking whoop! FDR and succeeding presidents also increased debt during periods of their presidency as well. Furthermore, according to your chart, you're full of shit and FDR didn't pay squat down. He was dead by that time...dipshit. Truman would have been the one paying it down. According to the chart you posted, the debt didn't start going down until 1946...dumbass!

FDR's policies outlived him. Our WWII debt was paid down by responsible Democratic and Republican administrations...UNTIL Reagan.

Reagan pledged during his 1980 campaign for president to balance the federal budget, but never submitted a balanced budget in his eight years in office. In 1981, the deficit was $79 billion and, in 1986, at the peak of his deficit spending, it stood at $221 billion. The federal debt was $994 billion when he took office in 1981 and grew to $2.9 trillion when his second term ended in 1989.

Office of Management and Budget, "Historical Tables: Budget of the United States Government

 

[regent]

Sometimes the words creditor and debtor nations refers not to the money a nation owes, but to the money a nation owes to, or is owed by, foreign nations. In the sense that we own foreign nations more than they owe us, we became a debtor nation under Reagan.

 

[uscitizen]

Only debt apologists use the debt as a percentage of GDP comparison.

Debt is debt.