A man, who happened to be President, died at 1 o’clock, and by 4:00 pm the Democratic Underground idiots are already pissing on his grave:
“R.I.P. In Hell” – Flagg
“The hysteric media outburst has already begun, his crimes against humanity notwithstanding. The blunt idiocy of that national self-deprecating spectacle makes me sick to my stomach.
Other than that, I’ll proceed to celebrate the news in private.” – NV1962
“That said, Raygun was soulless and, before DimSon, the most vacuous sock puppet in our history. He was, and still is, a tool.” – Tahitinut
“that was putting a spring in my step.
an evil force has been removed from the continuum.
what a goddaman beautiful fucking day- i think i may just burst into song at any moment…
Ding-Dong! Ding-Dong!…the evil fuck is Dead!” – Beaker
“May your ideas die with you. You were a terrible president and your administration was a band of criminals. Your poisonous legacy is still hurting the country in the policies of George W. Bush. ” – Sandpiper
The rest of the posts debate whether Reagan was worse than the current President, although the thread does contain several reasonable people stating while they did not like his policy, they see no joy in his death. What is wrong with the rest of the posters, though?
bains
It’s a twisted person that finds glee in the death of ones opponent. Where have we seen this recently?
Oh yeah,
Fallujah.
Patrick
Not enough bullets, never enough time. DU represents the worst of humanity, completely antithetical to Ronald Reagan’s consumate optimism. RIP Mr. President.
bains
And be prepared for the DKos fascist wing of the Left party to scream foul at ANY public memorial service…
As with Pete Rose, they aren’t upset with their own actions, they are pissed that they got caught.
Brian Linse
Why do you bother, John?
When Carter’s time comes the Freepers et al will be just as bad. We have our freaks and you have yours. They’re best ignored.
Dorian
Notice the pattern emerging. The greatness of a president is directly proportional to the DU’s contempt for him.
Poor souls all they have are a few bankrupt ideas and plenty of hate.
John Cole
Brian-
What could you possibly say bad about Carter (although I ask the same thing about Reagan).
I think he has was not a very good President, but I do think his integrity and honesty was helpful in the trauma of the post-watergate era. He has infuriated me in recent years discussing foreign policy, but that is just because I think it is inasppropriate for former Presidents to do so.
Atany rate, I dont see how people could say bad personal things about Carter. Clearly he was a decent, good man, who wished no ill will or malice on anyone, and who only wanted the best for people andthe country. He just didn’t do a very good job as president.
IXLNXS
“His presidency was not without its low points, but I choose to reflect upon the many good things that Reagan did while serving our country as president.”
Those were words from “A Small Victory”. They ring true. But there is a time when those who rightfully can question blind adoration. Question policy of his presidency. Question I would guess is how long exactly does one wait to bash the policies of a dead president?
I’ll give it a week.
Brian Linse
John:
I remember reading many rude and disparaging remarks on some of the usually more reasonable rightwing blogs when Carter won the Nobel.
I agree that Carter was an utter failure as president, and I agree that Reagan should be acorded the presumption that he was always acting out of good faith and true love for his country – just as Carter did – but there will always be extremist idoits on both sides to spew repugnant bile in such sad times.
You can point it out when the DU assholes do it, and I can point it out when the Freepers do it, but what is the point?
I once posted my theory of the political spectrum, and suggested that it was like a clock. At 12, you have moderates from both left and right, but at 6 you are a fascist, regardless of which direction you came from.
As far as I’m concerned the DU’s and the Freepers can all rot in hell together. Let those of us who are not emotionally disturbed do our best to debate the important issues faced by our great nation in a manner that can benefit democracy. This was the approach taken by Mr. Reagan, who would do battle all day with Tip O’Neil, then break bread with him and talk as men and as friends.
There are many politicians today from both left and right who would do the citizens they represent a great service by learning from president Reagan’s example.
DANEgerus
The greatest President since FDR, Ronald Reagan(R) inherited Jimmy Carter(D)’s foreign policy catastrophe, a nation with record high inflation and the worst unemployment since the Depression… and he turned the country around.
I surfed the alpha-bet channels, ABC, NBC, FOX were all interrupting to pay tribute…
Tribute to the dead… except…
Dan Rather on CBS had a hit piece ready and launched to the attack on Ronald Reagan(R)’s legacy with very argumentative statements while ignoring his historical achievements.
A premeditated smear
Oliver
John, I’m not excusing these guys but it’s pretty disingenous to think that the exact same sentiment will be broadcast when Presidents Clinton and Carter pass away.
HH
“I remember reading many rude and disparaging remarks on some of the usually more reasonable rightwing blogs when Carter won the Nobel.”
Er, yeah… they can do that if they want and there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s a difference between disagreeing with a Nobel award (Arafat anyone?) and pissing on someone’s grave, as I saw over at DU on Sept. 11 when it was announced Barbara Olson died, by the way.
HH
Reagan suffered horribly for 10 years, as did his family… it’s not as if he were running the RNC or something. Even if you believed the worst about the man, it takes a truly deranged mind to say the stuff you noted here.
Bill Quick
If Carter had any self-respect, he would have turned down that Nobel, since it was awarded not for his accomplishments, (which were nonexistent) but admittedly (even by those making the award) as a “kick in the leg” at GWB. Further, Carter most certainly has expressed bile and hatred lately, principally at the current President.
That said, I will follow the dictum I learned from my mother when Carter dies: I’ll say nothing ill of the dead. Which will leave me silent. And that’s all right.
As for the DU, I don’t care what some freepers might hypothetically do when the last unimpeached Democratic President departs this vale of tears. At them moment it is the Buried Donks who are behaving like howling, scratching, gibbering jackals, and they deserve to be buried beneath mounds of their own flung feces.
Far North
I think Reagan was a great American. But both he and Bush should thank their lucky stars for Bill Clinton. Reagan was able to do so much because he spent money that wasn’t there and ran up what was at the time, a record deficit. He took credit for outspending the Soviet Union but it was Bill Clinton who paid that bill and then some.
Along comes GWB who decides he can be Santa Claus and cut taxes. Never mind that 9/11 happened and 2 wars had to be supported. Bush wanted his tax cuts. If it wasn’t for Clinton eliminating the deficit and running a surplus, Bush could never have pulled off his tax cuts. Bush would have bankcrupted the treasury in 6 months but because of Clinton’s surplus, it took him a year.
I beleive Ronald Reagan turned out to be a good American but, remember, he wasn’t a saint. He was adamently against the 1964 civil rights act. I never heard if he came clean on that. Additionally, he was the commander-in-chief when 220+ Americans were killed in Beruit on Oct 23, 1983. These Americans were not permitted, by order of the President, to have live amunition while in Beruit as a suicide bomber drove through their security gates. Now, I constantly hear conservatives talk about our failure in Somalia and how Clinton was evil but I don’t hear these same conservatives mention Reagan’s complete failure in Beruit, which cost about 10 times more lives than our failure in Somalia.
Then there was the Iran-Contra scandal. It was a far worse criminal act than Watergate. But you know, Reagan finally admitted to that deed and I always had a certain respect for him for doing that. Bush should hang his head in shame for not acknowleding any of the many corrupt and dishonest acts of his administration.
But my heart goes out to Nancy Reagan and the Reagan family. My father suffers from Alzheimers. I understand and I am truly sorry for her loss.
Gary Farber
Another thought: A man, who happened to be President, died at 1 o’clock, and by 6:38 p.m., John Cole had already felt compelled to go find people to hate, searched, found them, and posted about them.
That’s your way to honor Ronald Reagan?
No thoughts on what he meant to you? No observations on why you think he’s great? No consideration of what his accomplishments might have meant, how he came to be the person he can be, what we can learn from him?
No, the way to honor him is to look for people to hate.
Is it possible there’s something a bit wrong with that response?
willyb
While it seems to me that political discourse in America is becoming more and more strident and partisan, my guess is that not much has changed over the last 20 to 40 years. It makes me wonder what the people in Germany were thinking as Hitler rose to power. How could they stand by, nay embrace, ideas that were based on the intolerance of people who succeeded where they had failed?
Many of the people that denigrate what President Reagan accomplished were not even of voting age when he was elected to office. If nothing else, Ronald Reagan was a man of vision, and his visions were clear. At heart, he was an FDR Democrat. He took over an America that was suffering with double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, high unemployment, high income tax rates, and an economy, indeed a country, in despair. President Jimmy Carter called it a malaise. We had hostages being held by Iran and were fighting a cold war against the Soviet Union.
President Reagan believed in a strong national defense, that you did not deal with bullies by giving them what they wanted so they would go away for awhile. Because he stood up against bullies and identified them as such, he was called a cowboy by the Hollywood movie set and the Europeans. He started the nation on a course of increased military spending, a course that ultimately ended up with the Strategic Defense Initiative. He fought communism on any number of fronts. Not because he hated the people that were communists, but because he hated the oppression the system brought to the people under its control. President Reagan believed in freedom for all people, and his leadership had a huge impact on the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall.
President Reagan also believe that as a nation we were over-regulated and that our income tax rates were a disincentive to to hard work. There is story (I don’t know if it’s true) about his experience making movies at a time when the highest tax rate was 90%, about how he did not think it made sense to work harder for 10 cents on the dollar. He rationalized that if he felt this way, that there were many others who had similar feelings and that many good things were not being done because of this tax policy. When tax rates were reduced to 28%, the nation began a period of dramatic economic growth. Even with the reduced rate, tax revenues during his presidency nearly doubled.
But perhaps more important than anything else, Ronald Reagan believed in America. He believed in its people, a system that protected the rights of the individual and liberty, and its free-enterprise system. And he believed that we could accomplish just about anything if we put our minds to it.
As a person who voted for Jimmy Carter, I say Ronald was a great president, and a great man. May he rest in peace.
RB
Reagan was full of grace, something his detractors seem to be lacking.
Safe journeys President Reagan.
John Cole
Gary-
I actually wondered immediately what the Du crowd would say- if I wanted to post the really nasty stuff, I would go to the Daily Kos.
Andrew J. Lazarus
From a technical standpoint, willyb has left two things out: first, that Reagan RAISED taxes when he realized his first cuts had gone too far, and second, I’m pretty sure his numbers (which he doesn’t specify or source) are in inflated dollars.
Government revenues fell sharply after the Reagan tax cuts. I don’t see any doubling, for example, in the following:
Individual Income Tax Receipts in constant 1967 dollars, billions:
Gary Farber
“I actually wondered immediately what the Du crowd would say….”
That doesn’t strike you as a perverse reaction?
Just as would, say, it be for a partisan Democrat if Bill Clinton were hit by a bus tomorrow, one’s first reaction were to go to lucianne.com?
Why would anyone’s first reaction to something be “what do crazy idiotic extremists I disagree with have to say?”
willyb
Andrew J. Lazarus,
To be honest, I didn’t do a lot of research regarding the numbers I used, and I did not adjust for inflation. I was talking about all tax revenues, but believe I could say the same about individual income tax receipts. Unadjusted for inflation, the total income tax receipts for 1977
willyb
Andrew J. Lazarus,
I forgot to ask you, what do you mean Reagan raised taxes? Do you mean individual income taxes? The same data source shows tax rates (for married filing jointly), and I don’t see where he raised taxes. What am I missing?
Ricky
Andrew Lazarus,
The dip in revenues were from the recession. Once it turned around & the Reagan boom ensued, revenues rose through the roof.
Don’t go there.
bains
Interesting angle Gary.
There are those on the left that not so subtly argue that the constant acerbic attacks upon Prez Bush are somehow merited by the right’s attacks upon Prez Clinton. Yet we see, yesterday, today, and I
SixFootPole
And what did the Freepers have to say about Wellstone’s death. In fact, they’re still at it. All’s fair in love in war. You love ’em. We’re at war with ’em.
Patrick
SixFootPole,
Here’s the problem with your little comparison. DU and Kos and Ted Rall are the face of the modern Democratic party, the tip of the spear.
From what I’ve seen, and I don’t frequent there, there are Freepers that are every bit as rabid and marginally literate as the DU crowd. However, the Freepers don’t represent me. I represent me. I don’t defend Freepers, control their content or tenor. I’m more of a Balloon/Rottie/LGF sort but I don’t necessarily endorse every word uttered from the right there either.
S.W. Anderson
Count me among those who could never work up a strong case of idol worship or the warm fuzzies in response to Reagan’s politics or presidential leadership. But that was about politics and public policy, not personal enmity.
Those Democratic Underground examples of mean-spiritedness at its most calloused and thoughtless aren’t representative of everyone on the left. You’re welcome to stop by the Oh!pinion weblog:
http://weblog.ohpinion.com
to read “And now, it’s mourning in America.” I trust you’ll come away with a more balanced impression.
Mean-spiritedness, callousness, vindictiveness are very much equal opportunity failings, with people all over the political spectrum saying and writing hurtful and regrettable things.
bains
Interesting that those right of center are more prone to criticizing their own while those left of center are content leaving the warm fuzzy blanket of ideological [im]purity over their brethren.
frontinus
Not meaning any disrespect of any kind but are you seriously suggesting a blog with exactly one comment on a dozen entries is more representative of the left than three of the top left wing blogs in existence?
To be fair that is as absurd as me saying that John here perfectly counterbalances all the lunacy of the freepers. It’s a matter of proportion.
Even the moderately objective left wing blogs I frequent(Digby’s, for example) are comparable to the big three in tenor. Admittedly from reader comments only but it’s atleast indicative of something, right?
Arvin Baker
What needs to be said is that this crowd should NEVER, EVER be allowed anywhere near the halls of power again. That includes Congress AND the White House.
Perhaps if moderate and conservative Democrats get so disgusted at how far left and sicko their party has become they will leave it. It happened right before the Civil War, and it broke the Democratic Party into two. It didn’t recover until 1884.
Maybe a good 20 or 30 years out of power will do them some good. And maybe they can expel these left wing fuckers and let them inherit the phone booth they now control.
HH
Some ANSWER types roared in glee at the mention of Reagan’s death. Any chance that any group of grass-roots conservatives might do the same if Carter died?
bains
The saddest commentary is that somehow the reaction of the “ANSWER” type crowd is justified by what could happen with the death of a Democrat President.
Wonderful…
I hereby absolve all right of center folks for transgressions presently committed – by the knowledge that the other side will do the same at some future date…
HH
bains – You misinterpret my comments… I’m sorry but I can’t imagine actual cheers from a group as large as ANSWER (who would surely have had a lot of media attention, as they do every time, if not for the Reagan coverage) at the death of Carter.
And it ain’t just ANSWER and DU.
S.W. Anderson
Frontinus, nothing I said suggested any kind of numerical parity or balance.
It seems you’re determined to judge everyone to the left of you on the basis of the mean words of a few of the most strident and offensive commenters on a few blogs. If you’ll look outside the box, you’re sure to find they are not so many or as representative as you would have it.
FWIW, I remind myself from time to time, there are those on the right who’ll tell you they want no part of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.
Andrew J. Lazarus
Yes, but not at this blog.
Oliver
Ted Rall = The Democratic Party? Please, gimme a break. it wouldn’t surprise me if Rall’s biggest audience were “outraged” right-wing bloggers. Unlike Free Republic, which doles out awards to Fox News and coordinates activities with the GOP. Unlike Rush Limbaugh, who campaigns with GOP candidates and raises money for them, and unlike Ann Coulter who fights for the GOP on what ever network she can whore on.
frontinus
I posted “more representative”. As in the big three(DU, Kos, Atrios), relative to your blog. Again, no offense but it is true. Polling any population using a subgroup is never entirely accurate but the bigger the better.
Andrew J. Lazarus
You can find a description of Reagan’s tax increases in the National Review. (Please feel free to Google for a more reliable source, like The Nation or Atrios.)
HH
Howard Dean’s blog’s embrace of Rall is all we need to know… Kerry was finally pressured into denouncing him but the silence from most on the left when he attacked Tillman was deafening. And sadly, it’s not just Rall, it’s Hitchens. Sadly, unlike say, Matt Welch and Michael Totten, he can’t admit he was wrong about anything when it comes to Reagan, despite his espousing similar beliefs on foreign policy today.
HH
Limbaugh campaigning with candidates as opposed to Al Franken? Er, what are you smoking Oliver? Aside from the occasional golf tournament, Limbaugh barely goes out, let alone raises money for candidates, at least he hasn’t in recent years that I can remember, or have seen.
HH
Greg Palast of the BBC and cable news pundit, big favorite of the likes of Atrios and Scoobie Davis, joins in piling on a dead man…
poormedicalstudent
ummm…HH, how did you even get through that entire Palast thing? i stopped right here:
“People don’t die of TB if they get some antibiotics.”
if a writer is this willfully ignorant, why continue reading what he has to say?
willyb
Andrew J. Lazarus,
“Reagan’s tax increases”
In your last post you called the tax increases during Reagan’s first term, “Reagan’s tax increases.” Do you know if he proposed these increases, or merely tolerated the work of Congress?
NV1962
Wow, I got quoted here.
Well, to provide just one bit of relevant context for those remarks I made on on DU, I don’t see much reason to respect a person — presently dead or not — who willingly and knowingly aided, abetted, armed and funded mass murderers.
Look into Central America, and what happened in countries like Honduras, Nicaragua, or El Salvador. To name just a few examples.
The genocidal clown may be referred to by many as a “great communicator” but that doesn’t mean I’m supposed to swallow his genocidal bent as justified merely by his expiration.
The fucker is dead – too bad he didn’t die in jail.
If you’re still interested in the Central American chapter of Reagan’s many crimes against humanity, check this out:
http://www.mediaprima.com/clark04/clark_and_soa.html
To ignore, downplay or justify those crimes is to demonstrate being something of any combination of the following: ignorant, immoral, or plain stupid.
Have a nice day, nonetheless.