Why do people call Reagan a Great President?

Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do."

Reagan '81
 
"A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?"
--Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the Sacramento Bee, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park, March 3, 1966

"I don't believe a tree is a tree and if you've seen one you've seen them all."
--Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, September 14, 1966

"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
--Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980. (In reality, the average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per year.)

"I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time magazine, October 20, 1980. (According to scientists, Mount St. Helens emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day at its peak activity, compared with 81,000 tons per day produced by cars.)

"Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1980. (According to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund, industrial sources are responsible for at least 65 percent and possibly as much as 90 percent of the oxides of nitrogen in the U.S.)

"Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards for man-made sources."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Sierra, September 10, 1980

"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."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Detroit Free Press, March 23, 1980. (According to the USGS, the Saudi reserves of 165.5 billion barrels are 17 times the proven reserves--9.2 billion barrels--in Alaska.)

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
--Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980

"Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile, with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1980. (The U.S. Department of Transportation calculates that a 14-car train traveling at 80 miles per hour gets 400 passenger miles to the gallon. A 1980 auto carrying an average of 2.2 people gets 42.6 passenger miles to the gallon.)

"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas."
--Ronald Reagan (candidate for Governor of California), interviewed in the Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965

"I have a feeling that we are doing better in the war [in Vietnam] than the people have been told."
--Ronald Reagan, in the Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1967

"...the moral equal of our Founding Fathers."
--President Reagan, describing the Nicaraguan contras, March 1, 1985

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976

"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself."
--President Reagan, in an interview with foreign journalists, April 19, 1985. ("In costume" is more like it. Reagan spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood.)

"They've done away with those committees. That shows the success of what the Soviets were able to do in this country."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Washington Times, September 30, 1987. (Reagan longs for the days of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the HCUA witch hunts.)

"We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education and the decline in profit over recent years."
--President Reagan, quoted in USA Today, April 26, 1983

"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."
--President Reagan, defending himself against charges of callousness on Good Morning America, January 31, 1984

"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965

"I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966

"If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with."
--Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, early morning edition, May 15, 1969. (Reagan reveals how he intends to quell student protests in the city of Berkeley, California. Protesters were teargassed and fired upon with buckshot, killing one, blinding another, and wounding 128. Reagan would later declare a state of emergency in the city and send in 2,700 National Guard troops.)

"Today a newcomer to the state is automatically eligible for our many aid programs the moment he crosses the border."
--Ronald Reagan, in a speech announcing his candidacy for Governor, January 3, 1966. (In fact, immigrants to California had to wait five years before becoming eligible for benefits. Reagan acknowledged his error, but nine months later said exactly the same thing.)

"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
--Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)

"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders."
--California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966

"We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
--Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964

"But I also happen to be someone who believes in tithing--the giving of a tenth [to charity]."
--Ronald Reagan, from The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, February 8, 1982. (He may believe in tithing, but he doesn't practice it. Reagan's total charitable giving of $5,965 did not approach 10% of total income. It was more like 1.4%.)

"[Not] until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this."
--President Reagan revealing a disturbing view about the "coming of Armageddon," December 6, 1983

"History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness."
--Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980. (History shows no such thing. Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)

"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."
--Ronald Reagan, in Newsweek, April 21, 1980. (Wrong again.)

"Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close."
--Ronald Reagan to aide Stuart Spencer, 1966

Reagan Quotes - The Reagan Years
 
Libs generally worship intelligence.


"I have flown twice over Mt 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.

(Actually, Mount St. Helens, at its peak activity, emitted about 2,000 tons of sulphur dioxide per day, compared with 81,000 tons per day by cars.)
 
Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do."

Reagan '81

It was true then and holds true today:

Tropical forests contain up to 40 percent of the carbon stored on Earth's continents and account for at least one-third of the annual exchange of carbon dioxide between the biosphere and the atmosphere, said Cleveland. Earth's soils are believed to store several times more carbon than all the planet's vegetation.
nsf.gov - National Science Foundation (NSF) News - Tropical Rainforest Nutrients Linked to Global Carbon Dioxide Levels - US National Science Foundation (NSF)
 
It was true then and holds true today:

Tropical forests contain up to 40 percent of the carbon stored on Earth's continents and account for at least one-third of the annual exchange of carbon dioxide between the biosphere and the atmosphere, said Cleveland. Earth's soils are believed to store several times more carbon than all the planet's vegetation.
nsf.gov - National Science Foundation (NSF) News - Tropical Rainforest Nutrients Linked to Global Carbon Dioxide Levels - US National Science Foundation (NSF)


OMG. I'll have to be much kinder. I'm so sorry. Don't plant any trees. By all means chop them all down.
 
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It was not the confrontation of the USSR that brought them down. The system was a failure plain and simple. Gorbachev is credited world round with the changing of Russia. Only American cons think it was Reagan and the rest of the world knows the reality.

You are correct that Reagan was not the only reason why the USSR fell, or even the main reason. Communism is a rotten system. It may have fallen earlier had oil not risen from $3 to $30 a barrel in the 1970s. However, Gorbachev in his biography said that he embarked on perestroika and glasnost in part due to Reagan's accelerated defense spending. He knew the USSR could not keep up. That's not the only reason, of course, but it is one.

the feel good thing is a myth too

First to go is the myth that Reagan was the most popular president since FDR. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting reminds us, “During the first two years of Reagan’s presidency, the public was giving President Reagan the lowest level of approval of all modern elected presidents. Reagan’s average first-year approval rating was 58 percent—lower than Dwight Eisenhower’s 69 percent, Jack Kennedy’s 75 percent, Richard Nixon’s 61 percent and Jimmy Carter’s 62 percent.” At the end of his second year, (remember the Reagan recession?) Reagan’s approval rating was 41 percent; after the Iran-Contra scandal was revealed, Reagan’s approval rating stood at 46 percent. His approval rating for his entire presidency was lower than Kennedy’s, Eisenhower’s and even Johnson’s, and at times he was one of the most unpopular presidents in recent history.

800px-ElectoralCollege1984.svg.png


That is not all due to the incompetence of the Democrat party.

Besides, I was referring more to his first term.
 
Don't worry. You'll get used to feeling stupid if you keep this up.

Keep up your own silliness. If you think trees are harmful--chop all yours down and stay away from the Redwood Forests in my state.

The air in the forests of the giant redwoods is pristine.
 
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In 1982, the Congressional Budget Office found that taxpayers earning under $10,000 lost an average of $240 from Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts, while those earning more than $80,000 gained an average of $15,130.
this is absolute NONSENSE... you're confusing Reagan's tax cuts with the DEMOCRAT CONGRESSES ATTEMPT TO CLOSE "LOOP-HOLES" to "PAY" for Reagan's taxcuts... DUMBASS.


By that fall, the jobless rate hit 10.1 percent—the worst in 42 years,
By WHAT FALL? 82? Reagan passed his first budget in October of 1981 dipshit... Reagan inhereited an economy in SHAMBLES...

and a year later 11.9 million were out of work. In 1983, the country’s poverty rate rose to 15 percent, the highest level since the mid-’60s.

Here is the graph of US unemployment from 1976 through 1988...

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/graphics/LNS13000000_109677_1230341355690.gif

and here is the numeric chart reflecting the same data.

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet

And you're basing this upon precisely WHAT Reagan policy? Now be as specific as you're intellectual limitations allow. Because I would like to know precisely how long you feel that an implemented policy should take to reverse a trend in an instrument the size of the US economy? Is it reasonable to expect the passage of a budget to instantly trigger a result? And is it reasonable to conclude that the budget Reagan signed in 81 contained 100% of his policy desires?


In 1984, a congressional study reported that cuts in welfare had pushed more than 500,000 people—the majority of them children—into poverty.

ROFLMNAO...

Well sure... the cuts in welfare... which is cuts in spending right? The cuts in Federal spending on welfare had, ACCORDING TO YOU... CAUSED THE THE RATE IN CHILDREN IN POVERTY TO CLIMB... Now a quick assessment of this conclusion will readily show that you feel it is the Federal government which is RESPONSIBLE FOR KEEPING PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY... which begs the question: What principle provides that it is the responsibility of the federal government to keep children out of poverty?

Now since you've declared that you do not approve of theReagan cuts in federal spending how long can we expect it will be before you begin decrying 'Reagan deficits?'
 
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Keep up your own silliness. If you think trees are harmful--chop all yours down and stay away from the Redwood Forests in my state.

The air in the forests of the giant redwoods is pristine.



Really? That's amazing... Imagine a coastal forrest which realizes a massive influx of Pacific driven wind would have clean air...

YET:

Do trees pollute the atmosphere?




Tim Radford
Thursday May 13, 2004
The Guardian



Yes, just as president Ronald Reagan said in 1981. "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do," he opined. A little later, environmental scientists ruefully confirmed he was partially right.

In hot weather, trees release volatile organic hydrocarbons including terpenes and isoprenes - two molecules linked to photochemical smog. In very hot weather, the production of these begins to accelerate.

America's Great Smoky Mountains are supposed to take their name from the photochemical smog released by millions of hectares of hardwoods.

This week Natural Environment Research Council scientists warned that as summer temperatures rise in the UK, the isoprene output from trees could make a small but noticeable contribution to human discomfort. Isoprene serves as a catalyst, driving the rate at which sunlight breaks down oxides of nitrogen - mostly from agriculture and cars - to produce atmospheric ozone.

Ozone is a triple molecule of oxygen. High in the stratosphere it is a godsend, screening out cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation. But in the lower atmosphere it is a toxin: it causes stinging eyes, prickling nostrils and aggravates severe respiratory problems. Statisticians calculate that in August 2003 - the long hot summer that caused an estimated 20,000 deaths in western Europe - more than 500 British deaths could be attributed to ozone pollution.

But the experts say the trees alone are not the problem. The real villain is the motor car. Trees soak up carbon dioxide, and respire oxygen, doing far more good than harm. And finally, as one forester observed: why worry about a few harmful natural chemicals? In a truly antiseptic world we would all be dead.


Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Uh oh... Looks like the gipper was right AGAIN! Of course the left has declared the natural outgas of all mammals to be a pollutant and is taking measures to outlaw THAT... so of the two Ronald Regan and the ideological Left... The left is hands down the loser in any contest of IQ...
 
Really? That's amazing... Imagine a coastal forrest which realizes a massive influx of Pacific driven wind would have clean air...

YET:

Do trees pollute the atmosphere?


---
Uh oh... Looks like the gipper was right AGAIN! Of course the left has declared the natural outgas of all mammals to be a pollutant and is taking measures to outlaw THAT... so of the two Ronald Regan and the ideological Left... The left is hands down the loser in any contest of IQ...

duh? here we go again...

Before anyone advocates chopping down trees to clean up the air - forgetting, for one, that they give us the oxygen we breathe - scientists caution that whatever forests pump into the air is natural. They also provide shade and scrub many pollutants from the air.

"Calling it 'tree pollution' is a vast overstatement," said Ned Black, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ecologist in San Francisco.

Reagan was lampooned by Democrats in 1980 for having claimed that 80 percent of air pollution was caused by plants and trees. Reagan aides later said the then-presidential candidate had been misquoted and was referring only to certain types of pollutants, not to all air pollution.
Reagan aides later said the then-presidential candidate had been misquoted and was referring only to certain types of pollutants, not to all air pollution.
 
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what do the experts say?

In the more than 15 years since the late President Ronald Reagan left office, experts have continued to debate the merits of his policies. His economic agenda -- known as Reaganomics -- was characterized by tax cuts, deficit spending and lower inflation.


ROBERT REICH:

Ray, look, I don't want to be disrespectful to the memory of a beloved president. Many things that Ronald Reagan did were very important for this country, but Reaganomics had some major problems. For one thing, it created a huge deficit. In 1981 at the start of the Reagan administration the deficit was about 2.5 percent of the national economy. By the end it was about 5 percent of the national economy. Interest payments just on that debt went from $69 billion in 1981 to $169 billion at the end of the Reagan administration.

With that kind of deficit, eventually you've got to pay the piper. There is a day of reckoning, and the day of reckoning came with a huge recession in 1990 and 1991.

ROBERT REICH: Undoubtedly I respect job growth. In the 1990s when Bill Clinton became president, I was with him. We faced a huge mountain of debt. The only way we could get job growth restored in the 1990s -- and by the way under the Clinton administration 22 million net new jobs were added to the economy -- but the only way to actually get that going was to get out from under that mountain of debt and reduce the deficit which is what we spent most of our time doing at least in the first few years of the Clinton administration.

Let me, if I may, just make one other comment. That is that undoubtedly the economy was very bad in the late 1970s, but inflation was the major culprit. Inflation was out of control. Ronald Reagan should get some credit, but Paul Volcker heading the Federal Reserve Board actually gets most of the credit. He broke the back of inflation by increasing interest rates substantially. In fact some would say that he ended the Carter administration because we were plunged into a recession with those huge interest rate increases, but we got out from under inflation.
 
No I keep finding referances to this CBO report and you just keep claiming I made it up.

Its in the 1982 CBO report on Reagans taxs cuts.

Go prove its doesnt say this.

I didn't say you made them up witless... I said you're intentionally misusing the stats... A tax CUT does NOT CONSTITUTE A POTENTIAL FOR AN INCREASE IN LIABILITY, DUMBASS... therefore your assertion that a Reagan taxcut cost the poor $245 is ABSURD on its FACE... therefore it had to be SOMETHING ELSE besides the tax cut and THAT something else was the DEMOCRATS DEMANDING THAT REAGAN CUT THE "loop-holes' in the tax code to "PAY" for the tax cuts... Reagan was working with a very strong Democrat Majority in both houses of Congress... this notion that Reagan could just pen up a budget and get it passed is absurd... his budgets were a function of intense negotiations with the subversives who were forced to the reaction of their constituents after Reagan took his principled ideas the 'the People"...; negotiations wherein Reagan did what he said he would do and the leftists in Congress summarily lied... For instance in the either 84 or 86 omnibus budget the congress agreed to a dollar for dollar cut in spending, if Reagan increased taxes... Reagan increased taxes, not one cent of spending was ever cut...
 
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what do the experts say?

In the more than 15 years since the late President Ronald Reagan left office, experts have continued to debate the merits of his policies. His economic agenda -- known as Reaganomics -- was characterized by tax cuts, deficit spending and lower inflation.

You uh... you DO realize that there was nothing huge in the 90 recession right... Inflation in the 70s was out of control because of the Keynesian policies of the late 60s and early 70s...

And sourcing Reich... Really? How much tall thinking can one expect from a midget?
 

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