Tag: Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s ‘Trickle Down’ Tax-Cuts-for-the-Wealthy Policy Is Still Ruining the Economy – in 5 Charts

Pensito Editors

It wasn’t a “trickle,” it was a gusher, and the money went up to the wealthy, not down to the middle and working classes.

George H.W. Bush called it “Voodoo Economics” when he was running against Reagan in 1980 – before he drank the Kool-Aid and became Reagan’s vice president. Well, they’re still doing that voodoo they do. Trump, McConnell and company passed yet another tax cut for their wealthy donors and corporate sponsors in 2017. And they’ll do it again if the control the White and the Congress after 2024. Count on it.

Reagan's "trickle down" economics policy is still ruining the economy

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Worse Than Benghazi: After Reagan Ignored Warnings, 220 Marines Were Killed by a Terrorist in Beirut

Jon Ponder
Left: The U.S. peacekeepers' command center and barracks before the explosion; right: Service members pick through the rubble following the Beirut bombing Oct. 23, 1983. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the bombing that resulted in 220 Marine deaths. (U.S. Marine Corps photo courtesy of the United States Marine Corps History Division)
Left: The U.S. peacekeepers’ command center and barracks before the explosion; right: Service members pick through the rubble following the Beirut bombing Oct. 23, 1983. (Photo from the United States Marine Corps History Division)

In 1982, seven years into the Lebanese Civil War, Pres. Ronald Reagan ordered 2,400 Marines into Beirut as part of an international peacekeeping mission. As peacekeepers, the Marines operated under rules of engagement that prohibited them from firing their weapons unless they’d been fired upon first — and even then they could only respond with the same type of weapon that had been fired at them.

There were other restrictions. Violence in the city was so bad that they were confined to their base at the Beirut airport. Eventually, the entire American force, which also included Army and Navy personnel, moved into a large, modern office building that had been repurposed to house their command center as well as living quarters. (The building is referred to in many accounts as the “Marine barracks.”) And yet the gates to the facility were ordered to remain open at all times, and the sentries who manned the gates were to be unarmed.

In Washington, Reagan ignored warnings from his senior advisers that he’d put American troops in harm’s way.

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Noonan: There Is No Such Thing as ‘Romneyism’

Buck Banks

There was something known as Reaganism. It was a real movement within the party and then the nation. Reaganism had meaning. You knew what you were voting for. It was a philosophy that people understood. Philosophies are powerful. They carry you, and if they are right and pertinent to the moment they make you inevitable. … There is no such thing as Romneyism and there never will be. Mr. Romney has never encompassed a philosophical world. He has never become the symbol of an attitude toward government, or an approach to freedom or fairness. “Romneyism” is just “Mitt should be president.” That is not enough.

— Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal.

Thousands of Americans Died While Reagan Ignored the Outbreak of a Deadly Virus

Jon Ponder
Elizabeth Taylor persuades President Ronald Reagan to finally acknowledge the HIV problem and for the first time he uses the term "AIDS" in a public speech. “There’s no reason for those who carry the AIDS virus to wear a scarlet ‘A,’” he said, as ACT UP protesters yelled outside. Americans who have died from AIDS surpass 40,000.
Elizabeth Taylor persuades President Ronald Reagan to finally acknowledge the HIV problem and for the first time he uses the term “AIDS” in a public speech. “There’s no reason for those who carry the AIDS virus to wear a scarlet ‘A,’” he said, as ACT UP protesters yelled outside — Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation

Republicans have taken great glee in turning the Ebola outbreak in the United States — six cases have been treated here so far, one patient has died — into an election issue this year. Blaming Pres. Obama for the outbreak fits neatly in their strategy of nationalizing the midterms by making the election about him, rather than about their party’s own lousy record in Congress.

The fact is, the Obama administration has acted rapidly and with keen efficiency in its handling of the Ebola outbreak when compared with the record of the handling of a similar outbreak in the early 1980s by the administration of GOP patron saint, Ronald Reagan.

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GOP House Chairman Apparently Auditions for Joan Rivers’ Job Hosting ‘Fashion Police’ – Criticizes Pres. Obama’s Tan Suit

Jon Ponder
Clockwise from top left: GOP House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King criticizing Pres. Obama’s tan suit on CNN; Pres. Reagan, in tan suit, with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; Reagan in tan suit with Australian PM Jack Hawke; Reagan addresses the media on Air Force One in sweat pants and a tie

With Joan Rivers lying in an induced coma in a Manhattan hospital, her fellow New York Republican, House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, appeared to be angling for her job as host on E!’s “Fashion Police.” During an interview on Newsmax, a birther news website, King offered biting commentary about Pres. Obama’s decision to wear a tan suit at a hastily called news conference last week.

Described by one source as “seething,” King complained that, “For him to walk out — I’m not trying to be trivial here — in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy.”

What do Americans really care about? Not the economy, stupid! Terror, of course.

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Wrong Again: Republican Claims Reagan Would Not Ignore Chemical Weapons Attack – But He Did

Jon Ponder

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Republicans’ delusional mythologizing of Ronald Reagan made its way into the debate over Syria this week when Florida GOP Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen claimed on Fox News that Reagan would have never stood by while chemical weapons were used:

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