Ronald Wilson Reagan was the President who attempted to cut school lunches for the poor.
Ronald Reagan attempted to have ketchup reclassified as a vegetable, in order to save money.
Ronald Reagan engaged in jihad against Social Security.
Ronald Reagan hated unions, and the threat they posed to the corporatist oligarchy he sought to establish and maintain. So he abused the power of the executive to destroy PATCO, the air traffic controllers' union.
Ronald Reagan's idiocy and bellicosity reached a peak in his war against the environment. The Great Prevaricator's famous quote--"you see one tree, you've seen them all"--was a harbinger of the environmental devastation wrought under his administration by the likes of Anne Gorsuch Burford, James Watt, and their ilk.
Reagan despised the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who were trying to reverse decades of US-sponsored oppression and murder of the poor in their country. He despised them so much that he cut deals with the radical Iranians, including Ayatollah Khomeini (who had held several dozen of our people hostage just a short time before) to launder money from stolen Pentagon equipment and send it to the right-wing, death-squad guerrillas in Nicaragua. These right-wing death squads--who have been implicated in the deaths of many peaceful nuns and priests, along with innocent children and other civilians--were praised by Reagan as "the moral equivalent of the founding fathers." Many of you are too young to remember this; it was known as the Iran-Contra affair.
Ronald Reagan is really the foster father of al Qaeda. By the mid-1980s, the Reagan Administration was supplying mujahideen [aka radical Muslim holy warriors] with more than a half a billion dollars per year, as part of Reagan's fetishistic obsession with the Soviet "Evil Empire." Fast-forward 20 and now 30 years later, and our old "friends" who we armed to the teeth, and taught to fight, guerrilla-style, have wreaked havoc on America and our troops. Thanks to Reagan, Saudi intelligence chief Faisal al-Turki funneled US money through Osama bin Laden to the Afghani rebels.
Ronnie Reagan was happy to show some love to Saddam, too. When Saddam Hussein was committing war crimes by gassing Iranian troops, Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld to reassure him that this was a-ok with Reagan.
Ronald Reagan described Medicaid recipients as "a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
Ronald Reagan described unemployment insurance as "a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders."
Ronald Reagan blamed trees for causing 93% of nitrogen oxide pollution.
Ronald Reagan--campaigning in 1980--promoted "states' rights", which many observers will recognize as code words for racist agendas. Reagan facilitated tax credits for segregationist schools.
This fucking dangerous lunatic idiot actually believed that ICBMs could be recalled once launched! And by some accounts, he was a believer in the "End Times" prophecies. Aren't we all glad he had his hands on the nuclear briefcase?
There's more--much, much more--but I am tired and angry and yes, more than a little drunk right now. I did not include links because anybody who has been paying attention since 1980--or has studied recent history--knows that all these assertions are true.
Every goddamned one of these items is completely contrary to what I still believe are the core values of the Democratic Party in exile. And each one demonstrates what an inexcusable abomination it is for a Democrat--including our President, who ran on the Democratic ticket--to praise, compliment, or pay homage to Ronald Reagan.
