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estesbob
Guest
truthorfiction.com/rumors/t/trashingthewhitehouse.htm
Everybody looks at this report and comes to different conclusions.
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Everybody looks at this report and comes to different conclusions.
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steveandersen
Guest
Of course the one thing that I will never forgive the Regan administration for doing was when this supposed champion of State’s Rights, new federalism, “get the government off our backs”, “government isn’t the solution it’s the problem”, etc went and used Federal highway dollars to essentially bully every state into raising the drinking age to 21.
Ever hear of the condition that Adams found the President’s Mansion in Philadelphia in after Washington left office?
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Well, my kids couldn’t drive drunk, and that’s a fact. But at least my wife and I could drive faster than 55 mph, sober.
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system
Guest
Also - when reinstating the registration for the draft, he used the threat of “no college loans unless you register for the draft”. Your money could be pulled right out from under you if you didn’t register. I thought that was dirty pool, but when you’re 18 or 19 and remember cousins and neighbors blown up in Viet Nam, and most of America trying to avoid the subject, you’re bound to feel something like that.
And then the guy goes and gets himself shot on my birthday! What the heck?!
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Al_Masetti
Guest
On the other hand, he gets no credit for bringing down the Soviet Union.
amazon.com/Victory-Administrations-Strategy-Hastened-Collapse/dp/0871136333
Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Paperback)
by Peter Schweizer
Or of his 40-year war against Communism:
amazon.com/Reagans-War-Forty-Year-Struggle-Communism/dp/0385722281/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b
Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (Paperback)
by Peter Schweizer
amazon.com/Victory-Administrations-Strategy-Hastened-Collapse/dp/0871136333
Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Paperback)
by Peter Schweizer
Or of his 40-year war against Communism:
amazon.com/Reagans-War-Forty-Year-Struggle-Communism/dp/0385722281/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b
Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (Paperback)
by Peter Schweizer
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steveandersen
Guest
well I don’t think it is too far out of line to ask folks to be part of the system if they expect something like cash out of it for themselves
nothing wrong there
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steveandersen
Guest
He gets quite a lot.
Far more than JPII, the inherent weakness of the communist system, the Polish labor leaders, and the average Czechs, Hungarians, East Germans, etc who had put up with all they could and said no more. (And the US tax payer who footed the bill for the spending match he invited the soviets to)
Of course Russia, now shorn of it troublesome ethnic periphery, has emerged 20 years later fat on oil wealth with a regime that doesn’t even have the fig leaf of ideology any more.
It is like the Tsars… only this time smarter, richer, and irreligious.
I wonder what the future holds for them.
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ribozyme
Guest
Well, the Soviet Union did collapse on itself.
Guess, where the source of that info is from. The much reviled (by myself anyway) Cato Institute. It was a book review of Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union.
cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n2-7.html
The proliferation of information throughout society is integral for social justice and an anathema to totalitarian control. Apprising people of the inefficiency and corruption of the Soviet Union was necessary for organizing massive dissent that led to its collapse. It would be extremely difficult to dismantle the network of information transmission that was allowed by glasnost as the information undermined Soviet ideology and did not reinforce it. Ironically, glasnost served to undermine the Soviet Union. I do not think Reagan’s conservative policies of military build-up contributed significantly.
Ipsa scientia potestas est!
Reagan did not do it. That apothegm is not vacuous phrase such as “family values” (the GOP in 1995 oppose the earned income tax credit expansion which would help families of the working poor), but it expresses a fundmental truth. I fervently adhere to that. That phrase is what destroyed the Soviet Union.
And no, I’m not a communist.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
We’re fortunate that the NY Times citation of Clinton didn’t tear a hole in the universe. The context clearly indicates that House Repubs wanted to make changes in the Reagan earned income credit in fairly moderate ways, e.g., making it available to families only, preventing it going to people with incomes over $50,000, making its limitations apply to all income, etc. Being always supportive of middle class welfare, Clinton had problems with making it apply only to those in need.
I realize many believe glasnost ended the Soviet Union. But the reality is that information was widely available in the Soviet Union before that. Glasnost was a reaction to something that was already going on in that regard, not the cause. Perestroika was also a last-second attempt to ameliorate the poverty caused by a regime that spent inordinately on privileged elites and maintaining its own power. And there were many strikes and rebellions in the Soviet Union before 1987; some quite serious. Remember how the Ukrainians welcomed the Germans? Remember how the Vlasovites maintained their own territorial governments and border crossings into the 1950s? Economic pressure was not only a matter of the arms race. Always a robber economy, the Soviet system had only one way to pay for itself when oil prices plummeted and it had spent up all the cash and credit its satellites could muster; the invasion of Western Europe, which it very nearly did in the early 1980s. The Reagan defense buildup discouraged that. Former Soviet military admit that.
It will probably be some while before we fully know the effect of JPII on the collapse. Certainly, he had a hand in providing resources and inspiration to the Solidarity movement in Poland, which gained a critical mass when the USSR had stolen the Polish economy bare. As it turned out, the Soviets no longer had the resources to reconquer Poland; witness its economic inability to even remove its troops, for which Western help was required.
It’s nice to think that somehow enlightenment brings about beneficent change. But in reality, dictatorships are quite capable of maintaining themselves in the face of it, as long as they have the resources to satisfactorily reward the thugs who keep them in power. When that fails, it’s over.
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Scottgun
Guest
Now while Reagan bringing down the SU might be hyperbolic let’s face it, the previous administrations were following policies that kept it on life support. Reagan pulled the plug and the SU died on it’s own. He still gets some credit. Sheesh!
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Sailor_Kenshin
Guest
Some credit. How generous.
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Scottgun
Guest
I’m not sure what you mean. My larger point is that the anti-Reagan stuff reads like a Jack Chick tract which imho actually helps convert people to Catholicism because anyone using an ounce of common sense realizes they can’t be that bad.
Some credit. How generous.
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Sailor_Kenshin
Guest
There were too many charts for me to read through most of it.I’m not sure what you mean. My larger point is that the anti-Reagan stuff reads like a Jack Chick tract which imho actually helps convert people to Catholicism because anyone using an ounce of common sense realizes they can’t be that bad.
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Al_Masetti
Guest
The United States under Reagan increased its military spending by about one percentage point to somewhere around 8% of GDP. To keep up, the Soviets increased their military spending from somewhere around 25% way up to 40% or some such. [Doing this from memory.] They could not maintain that pace and their economy imploded.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative … [labelled by the Democrats as “Star Wars”] … basically a system of defense against incoming Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The Soviets installed a dual system of anti-aircraft and anti-missiles plus dedicated anti-missile installations around Moscow Galosh ].
To some extent, the United States spoofed them … we built the XB-70 … but only two experimental test aircraft and the Soviets built a huge defense against them. We decided not to proceed with the production version of the XB-70 and the Soviets were saddled with their enormous and complex system of radars, missiles, and MiG-25 interceptors.
Every time the Soviets tried to build something, we were able to fake them out. They wanted to build a natural gas pipeline and stole our designs for turbocompressors; the pumps developed “mysterious” vibrations. They wanted minicomputers; we allowed them to steal our failed designs which we further scrambled and their computers failed. They needed outside financing for some infrastructure projects; the financing failed.
Eventually, they just ran out of energy.
It was not all one sided.
Our side took some heavy hits… if there had been a war, arguably the U.S. would have lost because the Walker family had given the Soviets the cryptographic keys that allowed them to read all of the U.S. Navy encrypted traffic in real time. The downside? Americans are “blabbermouths” … supposedly the Soviets had to train one million KGB agents to read colloquial American English … just to keep up with all the message traffic. [No idea how real that one million number is.]
Anyway, it was a very strange sort of war.
Read Schwizer’s book, “Victory”. He goes into a lot of details.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative … [labelled by the Democrats as “Star Wars”] … basically a system of defense against incoming Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The Soviets installed a dual system of anti-aircraft and anti-missiles plus dedicated anti-missile installations around Moscow Galosh ].
To some extent, the United States spoofed them … we built the XB-70 … but only two experimental test aircraft and the Soviets built a huge defense against them. We decided not to proceed with the production version of the XB-70 and the Soviets were saddled with their enormous and complex system of radars, missiles, and MiG-25 interceptors.
Every time the Soviets tried to build something, we were able to fake them out. They wanted to build a natural gas pipeline and stole our designs for turbocompressors; the pumps developed “mysterious” vibrations. They wanted minicomputers; we allowed them to steal our failed designs which we further scrambled and their computers failed. They needed outside financing for some infrastructure projects; the financing failed.
Eventually, they just ran out of energy.
It was not all one sided.
Our side took some heavy hits… if there had been a war, arguably the U.S. would have lost because the Walker family had given the Soviets the cryptographic keys that allowed them to read all of the U.S. Navy encrypted traffic in real time. The downside? Americans are “blabbermouths” … supposedly the Soviets had to train one million KGB agents to read colloquial American English … just to keep up with all the message traffic. [No idea how real that one million number is.]
Anyway, it was a very strange sort of war.
Read Schwizer’s book, “Victory”. He goes into a lot of details.
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MelanieAnne
Guest
Hey Al,
I liked the name “Star Wars”. I thought it was cool. Total exaggeration. But cool.
I liked the name “Star Wars”. I thought it was cool. Total exaggeration. But cool.
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Al_Masetti
Guest
Here’s another book I found about how Reagan with a couple of his friends undid the Soviet Union:
Previously, I went on and on about how Pope John Paul II, President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher had worked together to defeat the Soviet Union.
“The Three Who Saved the West” … says the blurb… I looked it up on Amazon, and here it is!
amazon.com/President-Pope…/dp/1596980168
“The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister … Three who changed the world”. by John O’Sullivan.
The blurb that came in the mail continues: … The heroic age of conservatism … As 1978 drew to a close, the West was in terrible shape. After the social upheavals of the Sixties had come the severe recession of the Seventies. Around the world, Communism was on the march. Then, in just two years, three remarkable individuals were elected to highest office. John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan each set about improving the objective condition – and, almost more importantly, the morale – of their people. And, working sometimes separately but often together, they began rolling back the Soviet Empire.
John O’Sullivan had a front-row seat: he interrupted his journalistic career for two years to serve as a special advisor to Mrs. Thatcher. And now, writing with authority but also great charm, he tells the story of these heroic figures and what they accomplished.
Neat.
Previously, I went on and on about how Pope John Paul II, President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher had worked together to defeat the Soviet Union.
“The Three Who Saved the West” … says the blurb… I looked it up on Amazon, and here it is!
amazon.com/President-Pope…/dp/1596980168
“The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister … Three who changed the world”. by John O’Sullivan.
The blurb that came in the mail continues: … The heroic age of conservatism … As 1978 drew to a close, the West was in terrible shape. After the social upheavals of the Sixties had come the severe recession of the Seventies. Around the world, Communism was on the march. Then, in just two years, three remarkable individuals were elected to highest office. John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan each set about improving the objective condition – and, almost more importantly, the morale – of their people. And, working sometimes separately but often together, they began rolling back the Soviet Empire.
John O’Sullivan had a front-row seat: he interrupted his journalistic career for two years to serve as a special advisor to Mrs. Thatcher. And now, writing with authority but also great charm, he tells the story of these heroic figures and what they accomplished.
Neat.
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Sailor_Kenshin
Guest
Riding With Reagan (by John Barietta, one of Reagan’s Secret Service people) is a small and unassuming book, but it gives an insight into many aspects of what made the man, and it’s a great read.
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