Myth vs. Reality: Reagan vs. Obama On Planes Being Shot Down

Posted by Mark NC on July 18, 2014 at 1:06 pm. 12 Comments :

The compulsion of right-wing politicians and pundits to reflexively denigrate President Obama is once again outstripping their devotion to country or respect for the truth. It is uncanny how predictable it is that conservative blowhards will leap at the opportunity to bash the President, even as events of critical significance to our national security are still unfolding.

That is the case as information continues to be uncovered concerning the shooting down of Malaysian flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine. Some of the more obscenely irresponsible comments come from the usual suspects, such as…

John McCain: I don’t understand this president … this is what we used to call in the military AWOL. There’s a direct loss of American lives here.
Rush Limbaugh: I don’t want appear to be callous here, folks, but you talk about an opportunity to abandon the Obama news at the border?
Todd Starnes: Obama won’t comment on Malaysian jetliner crash until he’s had a chance to read tomorrow’s paper.

On Fox News there has been a specific effort to compare the response of President Obama to that of President Reagan following the shooting down of a Korean jet on September 1, 1983. Of course the Fox position is that St. Reagan acted quickly and boldly to assert America’s outrage and leadership. However, an examination of the facts present a very different picture.

The gist of the criticism hurled at Obama was that his reaction was too timid, too slow, and tainted by his decision to keep his previous obligations with meetings on his schedule. The evidence provided to illustrate the differences between Obama and Reagan was a video of an Oval Office address by Reagan regarding the Korean jet disaster.

The first notable fact that was undisclosed by the right-wing nags is that Reagan’s Oval Office address came five days after the Korean jet was shot down. The Malaysian jet was downed only yesterday but, according to his critics, that is still too long for Obama to have waited to comment. As for the video itself, the depth of Reagan’s outrage extended to his declaration that the attack was a “crime against humanity [that] must never be forgotten” and that the Russians “owe the world an apology.” That’s telling ’em, Gipper. Make them say they are sorry.

Compare that to Obama’s initial remarks that stated that the attack was “An outrage of unspeakable proportions,” and included a challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a decision whether to continue to support violent separatists.

Obama: Time and again, Russia has refused to take the concrete steps necessary to deescalate the situation. […] We have been very clear from the outset that we want Russia to take the path that would result in peace in Ukraine, but so far at least, Russia has failed to take that path. Instead, it has continued to violate Ukrainian sovereignty and to support violent separatists.

There you have it. Obama laid the blame squarely at Putin’s feet and reiterated his demand that Russia take concrete steps to deescalate. Additionally, Obama called for an immediate cease-fire and an end to Russia’s provision of weapons and training to the separatists. It is an unarguably more aggressive first-response than Reagan’s, but he didn’t ask Putin to apologize so he must be weak.

Fox News and other conservative outlets have also been criticizing Obama for not canceling a couple of previously scheduled fundraising events. But there are some very good reasons for not doing so. First of all, the United States president should not be seen as being so easy to manipulate that an isolated terrorist act, not directed at the U.S., can force him to alter his plans. We are not, and must not be, at the mercy of the terrorists. Secondly, the President made an obligation to the people that organized and attended the events and he should honor that unless his presence would prevent him from taking necessary actions elsewhere, which was not the case.

Furthermore, those making the Obama/Reagan comparison also failed to note that Reagan himself jaunted off to fundraising events shortly following the Korean jet attack. On September 14 he helped raise funds for the Republican National Hispanic Assembly. On September 20 he helped fill the coffers of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. On September 27 it was a dinner for the Republican Majority Fund. Apparently it’s OK for St. Ronnie to engage in financial glad-handing after an international incident, but not a malingerer like Obama. For the record, less than a month after Reagan’s tour of GOP fundraisers, terrorists blew up the military barracks in Beirut killing 250 Marines. Can we say he was really on the job? Maybe Darrell Issa should open an investigation into that.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

Perhaps the most peculiar change in the right-wing media due to the Malaysian jet attack is that it has soured the right on their former hero, Vladimir Putin. For months pundits at Fox News and elsewhere were singing the praises of Putin as the model of strength, leadership, and Christian purity. Folks like Ben Carson and Sarah Palin expressed their glowing admiration. There was even a featured article on Fox News that asserted that “Putin Is The One Who Really Deserves That Nobel Peace Prize.”

At this point it’s hard to tell who the right admires more: Reagan or Putin. But it’s clear that they have a visceral hatred for our current president. You know, the one who is charged with leading the nation right now, and for whom patriotism would ordinarily compel conservatives to support in troubled times. But for some reason, right-wingers have chosen to disparage their president at every turn and before they even have facts to form a credible opinion. Not that they ever cared about facts. For them it’s shoot first and ignore the facts later. God Bless America.

Where’s The Outrage? On The Tenth Anniversary Of Ronald Reagan’s Death

Posted by Mark NC on June 5, 2014 at 3:41 pm. 1 Comments :

Ten years ago, on June 5, 2004, former president Ronald Reagan died after a long illness including severe Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a curious fluke of timing that this anniversary should occur just as some prominent events have sprung up in the news that parallel notable capstones of his term in office. And while many of these affairs have erupted into frenzied allegations of high crimes and misdemeanors on the part of President Obama, they generated a far more sedate reaction from Republicans of that era.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

Embassy Attacks

For almost two years now, the GOP has been furiously scratching at the walls to find something incriminating with regard to the tragic attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. In all that time, and after numerous congressional hearings and independent investigations, they have turned up nothing. So of course they decided to launch a new Select Committee on the Politicization of Benghazi in order to continue their fruitless and frivolous charade.

Perhaps on this day of remembrance, Republicans might take into consideration the fact that there were more embassy attacks, with greater loss of life, during the Reagan administration. And yet, there was never the degree of vitriol directed at Reagan for such deadly serious incidents as this:

“In April 1983, radical Shiite suicide bombers blew up the US embassy in Beirut, killing 63. Reagan did nothing to prevent this attack, and his ultimate response to it and a later deadly attack on US Marines in Beirut was to quietly withdraw from Lebanon.”

Climate Change

Last week President Obama announced an initiative to address the persistent problem of Climate Change that threatens to cause profound damage to our environment and our economy, while triggering profound national security risks. The Republican response to that was typically hostile, with rants about unlawfully overstepping his authority and deliberately attempting to sabotage the economy. However, no such rants were ever issued when Reagan said this in a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate requesting increased funding of nearly $500 million:

“Because changes in the earth’s natural systems can have tremendous economic and social effects, global climate change is becoming a critical concern.”

Voting Rights

A constant burr in the right’s britches has been their faulty analysis of alleged election fraud. Despite years of complaints, they have failed to turn up anything but trivial evidence of a handful of infractions, which they use to deny voting rights to tens of millions of citizens. Obama’s support for reform has yielded accusations of tyranny and advocacy of fraud. Recently the conservative-dominated Supreme Court drastically scaled back the scope of the seminal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Reagan opposed the legislation at the time, but during his presidency he had a somewhat different view that failed to garner the insults that Obama has suffered:

“To protect all our citizens, I believe the Voting Rights Act should and must be extended. […] The Voting Rights Act is important to the sense of trust many Americans place in their government’s commitment to equal rights.”

Veterans Administration

Another hot topic on the GOP outrage agenda is the news that some of the Veterans Administration facilities have badly failed the soldiers they are intended to serve. While most of the veteran community report that they are “highly satisfied” with the service they receive, the disclosures of malfeasance are serious and unforgivable. The problems appear to be locally based, yet that hasn’t stopped Republicans from placing the blame directly at the feet of the President. Funny, they never did that to Reagan when these VA fiascoes plagued his term:

In 1981 a former Marine committed suicide after claiming the VA had failed to attend to his service-related disabilities. In 1982 VA director Robert Nimmo was “criticized for wasteful spending, including use of a chauffeured car and an expensive office redecorating project,” after failing to address veterans problems with Agent Orange. in 1984 “Congressional investigators find evidence that VA officials had diverted or refused to spend more than $40 million that Congress approved to help Vietnam veterans with readjustment problems.”

Negotiating With Terrorists

More recently, Obama’s decision to rescue Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from five years of captivity by agreeing to release some aging former Taliban leaders has resulted in political attacks against the soldier, his family, and calls for Obama’s impeachment. Right-wingers complain that there is no justification for negotiating with terrorists and that Obama has violated a long-standing policy not to do so. That, however, is totally false, as proven by Reagan himself. The notorious Iran-Contra scandal was centered around Reagan’s initiative to free hostages in Iran by agreeing to sell the terrorist nation over 1,500 missiles. The proceeds from that deal were then illegally funneled to anti-Sandinista death squads in Nicaragua. Reagan’s surreal confession to these acts continues to strain credulity:

“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”

2016

Special Bonus Outrage: Setting up a future political battle, Republicans are going after presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Their fear of her is palpable as they struggle to bring down her popularity with the American people. A new survey shows her handily beating every GOP candidate she is matched against. Consequently, the right has gone all in to cast Clinton as “old and stale” (as Karl Rove said). Rove also suggested that Clinton was suffering from brain damage. Then the Drudge Report hilariously misinterpreted a People Magazine cover of Clinton leaning on a chair, which Drudge imagined was a walker.

All of this ignores the reality that Clinton is, by all credible accounts, in good health. But more to the point, she would be younger at inauguration than GOP pols like John McCain, Bob Dole, and, yes, you guessed it, Ronald Reagan, who still stands as the nation’s oldest president. This might be a good time to recall Reagan’s retort to rival Walter Mondale, who made some sly references to Reagan’s age:

“I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

While remembering the legacy of Ronald Reagan, which is fraught with disagreement and controversy, on this, the anniversary of his death, it would worthwhile to recognize the hypocrisy of contemporary Republicans who seem to have forgotten history entirely.

Late Additions

Immigration: Reagan granted amnesty to three million undocumented residents.
Al Qaeda: Reagan funded the Mujaheddin, from whom sprung the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden.
Gun Control: Reagan signed the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act that banned fully automatic rifles.

Does Fox News Think That Ronald Reagan Tried To Panic The Markets?

Posted by Mark NC on October 7, 2013 at 10:12 am. 6 Comments :

This weekend’s edition of Fox News Sunday had a segment wherein the host, Chris Wallace, interviewed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. In the course of the interview Wallace addressed the government shutdown and the approaching debt ceiling crisis with this phony premise:

“This week both you and the president seemed to be trying to panic the markets about both raising the debt ceiling and the government shutdown, saying that they should be more concerned.”

In fact, President Obama merely observed what every credible economist has said about the prospect of the United States defaulting on its financial obligations. It would throw the world economy into turmoil and inflate the U.S. debt by billions due to higher interest rates. Just the threat of taking such an irresponsible step would panic the market without Obama having to say a word. And Obama is not the only one who thinks so. Here is what the GOP’s sainted Ronald Reagan had to say about it back on September 26, 1987:

Reagan: Congress consistently brings the Government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations. It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility – two things that set us apart from much of the world.

The hypocrisy of the Tea Party Republicans pretending to care about impacting the financial markets is monumental. Their own words (not to mention their actions) have been far more threatening than anything Obama has said. They have been saying for five years that Obama and his Marxist policies would bring the nation to ruin. They said he would destroy the economy and the country; that ObamaCare would bankrupt the nation and lead to civil war; that asking the rich to pay a little more in taxes, rather than putting the burden on the poor and middle class, would crush the recovery; that anything the President ever proposed would be a job killer and a disincentive to investment.

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Those predictions were about as accurate as last year’s Mayan end-of-the-world prophecy. The stock market is higher now than it was before the recession. The unemployment rate has dropped from 10.1 to 7.3 percent. And ObamaCare has proved to so popular that the demand crashed the government servers. Given the right’s record on forecasting the future, how can anyone take them seriously? Even the words of their idol, Reagan, don’t seem to diffuse their rabid Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Dead GOP Scandal Society

Posted by Mark NC on August 22, 2013 at 4:42 pm. 5 Comments :

Fox News has been engaged in a protracted campaign of manufactured scandal mongering for most of President Obama’s term in office. They have attempted to connect Obama to numerous imagined controversies via innuendo and relentless repetition. But despite their best efforts, Fox, and their accomplices in the Republican Party, have utterly failed to produce evidence of any malfeasance on the part of the White House.

However, that fact has done nothing to impede their obsessive quest to tarnish the Obama presidency. And now Fox Nation has posted a hysterical article that is so brazen in its prejudice that it’s hard to comprehend the level of stupidity required to have produced it.

See Fox Nation vs. Reality for dozens of examples of Fox’s disregard for truth.

It seems impossible to believe that even the Fox News audience could buy into the graphic messaging in this item. But after learning that more Louisiana Republicans blame Obama, rather than George Bush, for the dreadful response to Hurricane Katrina, anything is possible, including the Fox Nationalist’s attempt to draw a line from the criminally corrupt administration of Richard Nixon directly to Bill Clinton and Obama.

The cognitive failure necessary to produce the item above requires some obvious historical omissions. Ronald Reagan’s presidency was marred by scandals that included improper negotiations with the Iranian captors who were holding Americans hostage. Later, his program of selling arms to Iran in order to raise money to assist fascist rebels in Nicaragua resulted in prosecutions and convictions of top aides like Oliver North, now a Fox News host and contributor. Other scandals swept through Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency and his Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The administration of George W. Bush was also awash in scandal. The most horrific, of course, was his deliberate deception regarding weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to invade Iraq. That totally unnecessary war cost the lives of more than 4,000 American soldiers, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. It also cost billions of dollars that Bush purposefully kept off the budget.

Then there was his unlawful firing of U.S. Attorneys for political reasons; and the outing of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, as revenge against her husband, Amb. Joe Wilson, for not going along with Administration lies; and the aforementioned Hurricane Katrina, wherein Bush’s negligence resulted in horrendous suffering and nearly 2,000 deaths in the Gulf Coast; and warrantless wiretapping; and the near meltdown of the U.S., and world, economy.

The scandals of those administrations that Fox Nation conveniently skipped over were far more serious than anything alleged in the Obama years. They involved numerous fatalities and criminal convictions, none of which have been associated with Obama. Yet somehow the Fox Nationalists managed to post a graphic tarring Clinton and Obama with the stain of Nixon, rather than Nixon’s Republican comrades. I would ask “How stupid do they think their audience is?” But clearly the the answer is pretty goddam stupid. And sadly, they’re probably right.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Obama’s Imaginary Bulldozer Rolls Over Saint Reagan

Posted by Mark NC on January 31, 2013 at 2:10 pm. 4 Comments :

The Fox Nationalists are working overtime to scare up horror stories about FrankenObama and his dastardly schemes. The latest episode features President Obama plotting to erase the memory of Ronald Reagan from the history of all mankind. As might be expected, they are lying.

In order to facilitate this nonsense. Fox scoured the InterTubes to find a posting at the “Moonie” Washington Times by a reader. He was not a part of the newspaper’s editorial staff whose credibility is already in tatters. He was merely a member of the community who posted an entirely speculative comment.

The allegation that Obama was planning to bulldoze Reagan’s childhood home to make way for his presidential library is false on many levels. First of all, the apartment building in question was not a significant place in Reagan’s early life. He lived there for less than a year when he was four years old. The city’s Landmark Commission had ruled it not to be of any historical value. Secondly, the building is being razed by the University of Chicago’s medical school to expand their facilities, not anyone associated with Obama. Thirdly, Obama could not possibly have ordered the demolition on behalf of his library because he has not even decided where to build it. Certainly Chicago is on the short list, but so is Hawaii.

None of this matters, however, to Fox Nation because the phony perception of Obama trampling the memory of Reagan was just too good to pass up – or to fact check.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The ‘King Obama’ Delusion

Posted by Mark NC on January 7, 2013 at 2:49 am. 23 Comments :

Apparently there were not already enough paranoid fantasies about President Obama circulating amongst right-wing conspiracy theorists. All that socialist, Muslim, Kenyan, Manchurian stuff is getting old and losing its capacity to invoke fear. So now these psycho Chicken Littles have a new nightmare to ponder:

At Fox Nation they are all worked up about a bill just introduced by a Democratic congressman. Rep. Jose Serrano is proposing to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution that mandated that presidents could serve no more than two terms. To the Fox Nationalists that means that Obama is plotting to convert America into a monarchy with him on the royal throne.

To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, “Nobody has ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of America’s Fox News viewers.” But the overarching stupidity of this misadventure truly boggles the mind. And that’s even if you set aside the fact that they are implicitly admitting that Obama would be reelected forever if he were permitted to continue running. Darn that democracy.

However, Constitutional amendments generally take years implement, They need to be passed by two-thirds of both houses of congress and then ratified by three-fourths of the states. If the Fox Nationalists think that’s going to occur at all, much less while Obama is still in office, they are in serious need of intravenous Xanax. What’s more, this amendment has been offered by Serrano in every congress since 2001, shortly after George W. Bush was elected. Was this Serrano’s attempt to crown Bush, or did he have secret knowledge that in the future an African without a birth certificate would inhabit the White House?

Republicans have also proposed repealing the 22nd, including Rep. Guy Vander Jagt in 1986, thinking it would allow Ronald Reagan to seek a third term. And speaking of Reagan, he was so supportive of this idea that he said he “would like to start a movement” so that people could “vote for someone as often as they want to do.”

Term limits were never a good idea. They are an undemocratic and artificial constraint that insults voters by treating them like children who cannot manage their own affairs. The problem with longevity in political office is the result of self-serving, gerrymandered districts and the fact that elections are dominated by wealthy special interests. If these corrupting influences were removed from the process, voters could be trusted to elect people who represent their interests and to remove those who do not.

And the beauty of democracy is that the idiots who buy into the nonsense that Fox Nation peddles would be overwhelmed by responsible citizens with reason and common sense, attributes that Fox works so hard to eliminate from the electorate.

Fox News Editorial Hypes Reagan-Blessed Email Service

Posted by Mark NC on August 23, 2012 at 10:52 am. 4 Comments :

Don’t send that email! Your “liberal” email account is undermining your values and your country. That’s the allegation in a Fox News editorial by Michael Reagan.

“If you use a Gmail or Yahoo e-mail address and are pro-life, support gun rights and oppose ObamaCare, you are funding activities aimed at trashing your own beliefs.”

The charges by Reagan are based on his assessment of campaign donations to Democrats and Republicans by employees of Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. It is a wholly invalid analysis because it represents the views of individuals who happen to work for those companies, not the views of the companies themselves. Reagan begins with the example of Yahoo’s CEO who bundled donations for the Obama campaign. The bulk of her fundraising actually involved personal acquaintances, people who had nothing to do with Yahoo. [Note: we know who is bundling for Obama because the campaign reports it on their web site. Mitt Romney refuses to reveal the identities of their bundlers]

Nevertheless, Reagan flatly and falsely states that “the proceeds of those [companies] are often used to support the liberal political agenda.” He offers no evidence to back that up. So the question arises as to what his motivation is to make these phony claims. And the answer is just a few paragraphs down:

“Conservative friends and associates are often surprised when I ask: ‘Why are you supporting liberal candidates and causes with your free e-mail?’ They react with disbelief, but that is precisely what is happening.

“We devised Reagan.com as an alternative to the big e-mail providers so customers will know that they are subsidizing candidates or causes with which they disagree, but so they may also feel that their private messages stay that way.”

There you have it. It’s nothing but a bald-faced marketing pitch for Reagan’s own commercial enterprise aimed at frightened and paranoid conservatives. He is seeking to line his pockets with the profits from a service that charges $40.00 a year for something most people currently get for free. And Fox News is permitting their editorial pages to be hijacked by this advertisement for a private business that is operated by their own employee. Using op-eds for personal gain is strictly forbidden by legitimate news organizations. So I guess it’s OK for Fox to do it.

In addition to the violation of journalistic ethics, it is also notable that Michael Reagan, the adopted son of Saint Ronald, has chosen to soil the Reagan name by acquiring the Reagan.com domain and using it for such a brazenly self-serving commercial purpose. You would think that a URL as valuable as that would be put to use to advance the legacy of the former president and/or the principles he held. Then again, what principle is more representative of the Republican Party than personal greed at any expense?

Gimme A Break: Fox News Is Suddenly Concerned About Being Respectful

Posted by Mark NC on June 22, 2012 at 8:49 pm. 2 Comments :

Making headlines today at Fox News is story that serves as a shining example of why the world’s champion hypocrites bow before the greatness of Fox.

It seems that Fox News has suddenly taken an interest in promoting civility and respect for national leaders. Well, as long as they are dead Republican candidates for sainthood.

Apparently a couple of gay White House guests were compelled to express how they feel about President Reagan, a man who let nearly his entire two term terms in office expire (not to mention thousands of Americans) before he even uttered the word “Aids.” It’s not surprising that some people may have strong feelings about that. Fox, however, thinks that their candid, and indisputably rude, redress of grievances was intolerable and worthy of a front page rebuke.

That’s funny, because Fox doesn’t have any problem with being shamelessly rude when debasing Democrats, including the country’s first female Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Both of those items above were posted today. A few weeks ago, Fox used the same photo to call our current president stupid.

So it is clear that Fox is terribly concerned about people behaving with dignity and exercising decorum, particularly with regard to the offices of our highest leaders. And in keeping with that sentiment, Fox Nation demonstrated their news judgment today by posting this at the top of their web page:

Yep, that’s surely the most important breaking news story of the day, and a properly respectful manner in which to treat the President. Plus, it saves a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted on actually covering the speech that Obama delivered moments later.

Damn – It’s Getting Hard To Keep Up With The Crazy On Fox Nation

Posted by Mark NC on June 20, 2012 at 10:27 am. 2 Comments :

In attempting to monitor the outrageous bias and relentless dissemination of propaganda that appears on the Fox News web site, Fox Nation, sometimes the burden is overwhelming. The editors at Fox Nation are just too fast and too furiously committed to their mission of deceiving their glassy-eyed readers, that keeping up becomes an Olympian task.

Just yesterday the stream of craziness was so intense that I am forced to compile them all here in abridged form.

Let’s begin with the most repulsive and unsubstantiated item. The Fox Nationalists post things like this fairly often just to keep the impression of a lawless administration active in the minds of their readers.

Next up, an absurd an irrelevant item about a man that President Obama met only twice in his life, as a child. But if Fox can make a connection about him to the President, even if the allegation is tenuous, they will jump at the opportunity.

There actually is no enemies list as referenced in this headline. The article is about an FEC complaint filed by the Obama campaign to force Karl Rove’s blatantly political PAC to be treated under the law as any other PAC. Which means that they would have to disclose their donors. Arguing against this is to advocate to maintain a system that permits secretive billionaires to buy elections.

After disingenuously complaining about intimidation tactics in the item above, the Fox Nationalists persist in their intimidation campaign against Media Matters. With no new news whatsoever, Fox & Friends devotes yet another segment to slandering the group and its founder David Brock.

This one is pretty funny. The Fox Nationalists post an item taking Bill Maher to task for making a comedic animal reference with regard to the Republican Party. And in doing so they call him a pig (as they have done many times before). Also note the comment that is typical of the Fox Nation community whenever the opportunity arises to hurl a racist insult at the President.

And we’ll close with my personal favorite. The Fox Nationalists posted this item asserting that Obama is not the only president to have been interrupted by reporters in the middle of an address. However, the video they offer as proof shows Reagan being interrupted only after he finished his prepared remarks and was turning the podium over to someone else.

Bear with me, folks. I’m trying to keep up. but it isn’t easy. The Fox Nation editors are masters of deception and they have abundant resources. They are also a closely guarded secret. Unlike every other news enterprise, Fox will not reveal who is responsible for the content on Fox Nation. They have no masthead and have ignored inquiries as to the identity of their staff. I suspect it’s a class of remedial 13 year olds at an evangelical reeducation camp in the basement of News Corp headquarters.

Whose Side Are You On, Reagan Or Labor?

Posted by Mark NC on July 21, 2011 at 10:23 am. 4 Comments :

FYI: The headline of this article is a trick question.

In the long-running debate over government spending, Republicans have repeatedly brought up unrelated issues connected to worker’s rights and collective bargaining. GOP governors across the nation are attempting to use the economic crisis to break unions and rollback the gains that working Americans have achieved over decades of organizing with massive popular support.

However, these regressive politicians who are doing the bidding of their wealthy, corporate benefactors, have a stark disagreement with one of their professed heroes:

Let me repeat that:

“Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.”

That’s right. None other than the sainted Ronald Reagan recognized how valuable unions are to America. This comment is more than a passive bit of pandering to working class constituents. It is an unambiguous affirmation that unions are not just a tangential group of negotiators for farmers or factory workers, but a vital institution that is a necessary component of freedom.

This should not come as too much of a surprise when considering that Reagan was the first, and only, union president (Screen Actors Guild) who ever ascended to the presidency of the United States.

Nevertheless, GOP governors have been bad-mouthing unions and their members for months (years, really). They refer to them as thugs and conjure up Mafioso imagery. They have embarked on a coordinated campaign to smear and discredit the very organizations that are standing up for our nations citizens and families, most of whom are working people, not wealthy hedge fund managers. It’s dishonest and dangerous and intended to harm average Americans.

Speaking of dangerous, the GOP governors who are mounting these attacks are represented by the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA). That’s the organization that Rupert Murdoch gave a million dollars to last year. Well, I would stay away from their web site. Norton Internet Security, a leading Internet software company that monitors web safety, reports that the RGA.org is “Unsafe” with six live computer threats.

The irony is delicious. The Republican governors web site is unsafe, a threat even, just as are the policies of their members.

[Update} This morning the RGA’s site status by Norton changed to “Untested.” That’s still not particularly comforting. However, it is also not nearly as accurate. The GOP’s policies have been tested and they do not work. We’ve had Bush’s tax cuts for the rich (I mean “job creators”) in place for ten years. Where are the jobs?

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Embassy Attacks

Climate Change

Voting Rights

Veterans Administration

Negotiating With Terrorists

2016

Late Additions

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