Isn't it funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same?
Welcome to The Land of Republican Principles, or, as I call it, The Land Of Confusion.
More below the fold
The 40th President, Ronald Reagan
Who does not feel a growing sense of unease as our allies, facing repeated instances of an amateurish and confused administration, reluctantly conclude that America is unwilling or unable to fulfill its obligations as the leader of the free world?
Who does not feel rising alarm when the question in any discussion of foreign policy is no longer, "Should we do something?", but "Do we have the capacity to do anything?"
Did that quote come form yesterday's New York Times, or The Washington Post? No. It came from Ronald Reagan's Acceptance Speech at the 1980 Republican Convention
29 years after Ronald Reagan said this, we are still dealing with the same crap today.
Yes, in case you have not noticed, every idea the Republicans have put into policy since 1980 has failed, and failed miserably. You would never know this by listening to Republicans though. To them, 1980 was the right-wings summer of love in 1969.
Ideas like Trickle Down Economics, Fiscal Conservativism and Smaller Government combined with a moral majority have screwed up our country so badly we are almost certainly entering an era of a decline in American international influence. Ideas like Deregulation, Regressive Tax cuts favoring the wealthy helped destroy both the American and the World economy. Ideas like faith-based policy, abstinence only sex ed. and denying condoms to AIDS victims in africa have helped destroy many families world wide. Ideas like allowing lobbyists to head Federal industry oversight agencies, ignoring pollution and destroying agnecies like OSHA and the EPA helped destroy the world's ecology. The Republican foreign policy of "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. " has destroyed the World's opinion of America. And, last but not least, the idea that George W Bush would make a competent (electable) Presidential Candidate helped expedite the destruction, of, well, the world. And that is not all, a person could go on and on about how terrible the Republican policies formed by their principles have been for Planet Earth, but that doesn't bother the GOP.
Does this get their modern Reagan worshiping conservative down? No. Quite the opposite, to them, those were the good old days
2/20/87
"The simple truth is, 'I don't remember - period'" - President Reagan writing to the Tower Commission to set the record straight about whether he authorized the arms shipment in advance.
quickchange.com
And why should I have to remember things, or be accountable for my actions? I am just Ronald Reagan, POTUS and Leader of the Free World.
Except he did remember, at a later date
3/4/87
President Reagan responds to the Tower Commission with a 12-minute speech in which he:
· Acknowledges that the Iran-contra affair "happened on my watch"
· Says nobler aims of long-term peace "deteriorated...into trading arms for hostages"
· Calls the deal "a mistake"
As for his "management style", the problem was that "no one kept proper records of meetings or decisions," which led to his inability to recall approving the arms shipment. "I did approve it," says the President. "I just can't say specifically when." He adds, "Rest assured, there's plenty of record-keeping going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
Says Indiana senator Dan Quayle after the speech, "The Gipper's back."
quickchange.com
Seems pretty confused to me.
And then we have the whole trickle down thing, you know, the whole ponzi scheme economoic system that says if we give the rich all of the money eventually you will get some too.
Wow, that worked like a charm, didn't it?
Then there is that whole Iraqi-Iranian 10 year war that went on during the Reagan years. Guess who we backed. If you said Saddam, you win a gold star.
Reagan, determined to check arch-foe Iran, opened a back door to Iraq through which flowed US intelligence and hundreds of millions of dollars in loan guarantees even as Washington professed neutrality in Baghdad's war with Tehran.
~snip~
Donald Rumsfeld, then Reagan's special Middle East envoy, is credited with establishing the back channel to Saddam on a secret trip to Baghdad in December 1983.
Washington had plenty of motives to help Saddam stave off an Iranian victory. Not only was the United States still smarting from the 1980 hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran, but its embassy and a marine barracks in Beirut had been struck with truck bombings earlier in 1983.
commondreams.org
Getting confused yet?
The 41st President, George H. W. Bush
Yeah, how did that end up working out for you?
Confused about George Bush I on Iran-Contra?
1/28/87
"On the surface, selling arms to a country that sponsors terrorism, of course, clearly, you'd have to argue it's wrong, but it's the exception sometimes that proves the rule." - George Bush on Good Morning America.
quickchange.com
Selling arms to a nation that sponsors terrorism, on the surface, you'd have to argue, but, the exception sometimes proves that, clearly . . .
Confusion? Or are they just plain wrong?
Because of the way the Tribunal has been run, it's highly unlikely there'll be any mention of U.S. complicity with that slaughter. In fact, President George H. W. Bush was very much involved.
It was he who in February 1991, as American forces were driving Saddam's troops out of Kuwait, called for the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow the dictator. That message was repeatedly broadcast across Iraq. It was also contained in millions of leaflets dropped by the U.S. Air Force. Eager to end decades of repression, the Shiites arose. Their revolt spread like wildfire; in the north, the Kurds also rose up. Key Iraqi army units joined in. It looked as if Saddam's days were over.
But then George H. W. Bush blew the whistle. Things had got out of hand. What Bush had wanted was not a messy popular uprising but a neat military coup -- another strongman more amenable to Western interests. The White House feared that turmoil would give the Iranians increased influence, upset the Turks, wreak havoc throughout the region.
alternet.org
So, we had Saddam on the ropes, and then let him slip through our fingers? Why?
I guess it makes more sense in the two chapters from now.
Our 42nd President Bill Clinton
During the 8 years the Democrats controlled the White House, the Republican part released their Contract With America, which was worth about as much as a union contract with GM today.
Other lowlights by the Republican party during the Clinton years include, but are not limited to.
- Shutting Down The Federal Government (1995)
- leading the fight for Impeachment against Bill Clinton because of his sex-life.
- Fighting Clinton's Stimulus Bills
- Fighting Clinton's Health Care Reforms
- Inventing the Liberal Media bias
- Being the first Political Party to attack a First Lady as policy since FDR and Elanor Roosevelt
- many other assorted instances of douchbaggery, courtesy the GOP
- Running George Bush Jr as their Presidential Candidate in 2000
This last example is the most unforgivable of their crimes against America.
The 43rd President George W. Bush
It doesn't get more confusing and corrupt than this.
Yes, when it comes to confusion, screwing up, clueless behavior, lack of curiosity, corruption, inattention to detail, cronyism, faith in your gut, an inability to speak sensibly, or just flat out stupidity, confusing War crimes with foreign policy, confusing foreign policy with energy policy, confusing one word for another, or just down right having no clue what the hell you are doing, well, nothing tops the monument to stoopid erected by the American people during the George W Bush Reign of Terror. What else can I say, let's just let the man speak for himself, if you can bear to listen.
As I stand amidst the smoldering wreckage left over by 29 years of making shit up as you go along, just as long as it benefits your connected buddies and you can wrap it up in a blanket and call it "Conservative", I can not imagine how the hell people swallow the Conservative tripe anymore. The GOP has been marginalized over and over at the ballots, and yet the Traditional media continues to parrot their talking points, their base seems more dangerous as a minority than when they were in charge, and the ideas brought forth by Conservative leadership are neither "ideas" or "conservative" by any measure of either.
The 8 years of the 43rd Presidency were utterly wasted, counter productive at best and mind-blowing ridiculous and stupid at worst. we have citizens living in tent cities, we have a deficit that doubled under Bush while "fiscal conservatives" dominated Congress, and you could go on and on. Now we have to clean up this mess, but we also have to make it our jobs to remind people of how we got here in the first place.
Our 44th President Barack Obama
It is now the task of the Democratic President to solve thirty years of mistakes that have led up to where we are now. Mistakes made largely by the Conservative GOP. Will they help? Can they, with nothing but the tired and broken toy of ideas that they have worn the treads off of long ago.
I don't think we want their help. I don't even think we should listen to the GOP anymore. We should just close the doors in their faces and laugh at them and their ideas for as long and hard as we can. We should try to get to the Capital building early, just to lock them out before Congress is adjourned each morning. That way they can't do anymore damage.
Because all the GOP of 2009 can offer us is a new message to the same bad ideas. The only song they know is "The Land Of Confusion". The only difference between then and now is that the images in the video are sharper, and the need for puppetry is long gone.