God Bless Nancy and President Reagan, May God give you comfort Mrs. Reagan.
Posted on 06/07/2004 7:43:41 AM PDT by BigWaveBetty
Thank you President Reagan!
The Blue Snooties (Mostly men) I worked with were a strange group. They didn't have any political discussion with me, lowly sec'y, but they had no trouble telling me how horrible southern men were to women. You can imagine the look I shoot back at hearing that.
This group of 15 was the rudest, nasties, most condescending clutch of know nothings I've ever had the displeasure to work with.
********************************************
But Mae has it right, GWB carries younger vote in a bigtime! This will be their revolution against their liberal parents. :-)
God Bless Nancy and President Reagan, May God give you comfort Mrs. Reagan.
I love that woman in the background grinning at them.
I'll admit, when I saw the recorded footage of Nancy beside the casket tonight on the news, I burst into tears.
That's priceless.
And never fear, the miserable, envious reprobates MUST throw in their two bits:
Associated Press: "Over two terms, from 1981 to 1989, Reagan reshaped the Republican Party in his conservative image, fixed his eye on the demise of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism and tripled the national debt to $3 trillion in his single-minded competition with the other superpower."
BBC: "His foreign policy was criticised for being in disarray. . . . His October 1983 invasion of the small Caribbean island of Grenada was dismissed as a clumsy sham. Then there were his gaffes. . . . The report [from Congress on the Iran-contra kerfuffle] was seen as a devastating indictment of Mr Reagan's style of government. . . . More of a figurehead than a strong leader with a grasp for detail . . ."
Reuters, in the lead paragraph of an obituary: "Ronald Reagan, who died on Saturday at 93, was one of the great mysteries in American politics--was he the man in charge or simply a puppet, the master politician or a manipulated performer?" (Hey Reuters, isn't one man's manipulated performer another's freedom fighter?)
Reading stuff like this reminds us of just how similar the complaints about President Bush are to those about Reagan when he was in office: "cowboy," "simplistic," "warmonger," "dim-witted," "figurehead." The only one missing is "movie actor," and in a particularly imaginative bit of Bush-bashing, the Times' Alessandra Stanley manages to disparage the current president for not being an actor:
After American troops seized Baghdad, President Bush donned a flight suit and landed by jet fighter on an aircraft carrier festooned with the words "Mission Accomplished." Mr. Reagan stopped wearing costumes when he left Hollywood. Yesterday, he once again stole the show.
Stanley's colleague Adam Nagourney tries to find hope for the Democrats: "Some Republicans said the images of a forceful Mr. Reagan giving dramatic speeches on television provided a less-than-welcome contrast with Mr. Bush's own appearances these days, and that it was not in Mr. Bush's interest to encourage such comparisons."
Well, maybe. Certainly Bush isn't as eloquent as Reagan was. Then again, neither is John Kerry. When Bush speaks, you often imagine Reagan might have said the same thing better. When Kerry speaks, you imagine Reagan would disagree--assuming he could even figure out what Kerry was saying. I love BotW.
Natan Sharansky (né Anatoly Shcharansky), the Soviet dissident turned Israeli official, tells a story of Reagan in today's Jerusalem Post:
In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.
Let's remember that Reagan took a lot of flak for that statement--from many of the same people who now criticize President Bush for, among other things, identifying the axis of evil. In 1983 they agreed with Pravda rather than Sharansky. Apparently they are condemned to repeat history.
**********************************************
'He Is a Very Famous Man'
Ronald Reagan made no public appearances during the last decade of his life, but in November 1997 the New York Times published an article that provided a glimpse into his twilight years and the toll Alzheimer's disease was taking. We managed to find a copy on the Web site of the Standard-Times of New Bedford, Mass., and here are two anecdotes that stuck with us all these years:
In February 1996, George Shultz went to visit his old boss, Ronald Reagan, at the former president's home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He drank tea with Reagan and his wife, Nancy, and talked a little politics. In all, he stayed perhaps an hour.
That night Shultz, the former secretary of state, received a call from Mrs. Reagan, who told him that "something poignant happened today that you would like to know about."
At one point in the visit, Reagan had left the room briefly with a nurse. When they came back, Mrs. Reagan went on, "he said to the nurse: 'Who is that man sitting with Nancy on the couch? I know him. He is a very famous man.' " . . .
This summer, walking in Armand Hammer Park near his home, Reagan was approached by an elderly tourist and his 12-year-old grandson, Ukrainian emigres now living near Toledo, Ohio. They spoke with him for a moment, and the grandfather snapped a picture of the boy sitting with the former president. An article about the encounter, and the picture, appeared first in The Toledo Blade and then in newspapers around the country.
The other day, the grandfather, Yakob Ravin, recalled their meeting.
"We went to the park, for a picnic, with our friends," he said. "And then we saw President Reagan. And we began to cheer him, and said, 'Mr. President, thank you for everything you did for the Jewish people, for Soviet people, to destroy the communist empire.'
"And he said, 'Yes, that is my job.' "
Last month, as the Baltimore Sun notes, Mrs. Reagan said at a Beverly Hills, Calif., fund-raiser that "Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him." Joanne Drake, Mr. Reagan's chief of staff: "While it is an extremely sad time for Mrs Reagan, there is definitely a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering and that he has gone to another place."
*******************************************
Patriotic in Hindsight
In an editorial on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, the New York Times argues that today's war just doesn't meet the high standard set by World War II:
It's tempting to politicize the memory of a day so full of personal and national honor, too easy to allude to the wars of our times as if they naturally mirrored World War II. The iconic starkness of the forces that met on the beaches of Normandy makes that temptation all the greater. But beyond the resemblance of young soldiers dying in wars 60 years apart, there is no analogy, and that is something we must remember today as well. D-Day was the result of broad international accord. By D-Day, Europe had been at war--total war--for nearly five years, at profound cost to its civilian population. American civilians, in turn, had willingly made enormous material sacrifices to sustain the war effort. There was no pretense that ordinary life would go on uninterrupted and no assumption that America could go it alone.
So in the Times' view, a war of liberation is worthwhile only if it's a "total war" that lasts "nearly five years," entails a "profound cost to [the] civilian population" and "enormous material sacrifices" and "no pretense that ordinary life would go on uninterrupted." We guess Sept. 11 wasn't "profound" enough for the Times. How many American civilians do the terrorists have to kill before the paper's editorialists will deign to approve of our country's efforts?
And what's this about a "broad international accord"? If we remember our history right, at least three major countries--Germany, Italy and Japan--weren't on America's side of World War II. Italy and Japan both have troops in Iraq, even if Germany was pro-Saddam. Seems to us two out of three ain't bad. Stories at Best of the Web.
A sign of how the MediaCrats really don't "get it":
This morning both the NY Times and the WashPost have prison-abuse headlines ABOVE their Reagan coverage.
Communist Cuba harshly criticized Reagan in its first public reaction to his death, saying Monday: ``He who never should have been born has died.''
``As forgetful and irresponsible as he was, he forgot to take his worst works to the grave,'' the government's Radio Reloj station said in an editorial broadcast across the Caribbean island. link.
WHEN ABC News broke the sad news of Ronald Reagan's death Saturday afternoon, it sent its competitors into a frenzy. The press corps traveling with President Bush in Normandy first heard the news when ABC's White House reporter Terry Moran began doing a live report in their midst. The reaction, according to one eyewitness, was "total chaos — people running everywhere, knocking into things." CNN's John King yelled into his cellphone that CNN had been beaten and was so upset he threatened to quit. King ended his tantrum by throwing his cellphone to the ground. Bad move: his meltdown was captured on tape. [It just doesn't get any better than this, folks!] So just how did ABC get such a big jump? The network refused comment, but insiders credit ABC News chief David Westin. Apparently, working the phones produces better results than throwing them.
And this:
JENNIFER Lopez was in such a hurry to marry Marc Anthony because she has a baby on the way, sources say. A guest at Saturday's quickie surprise wedding told our source that Lopez, called "Lola" by her bridegroom, is pregnant. Another friend confirmed that La Lopez has been telling close pals she's expecting. ...
NOT only were John Kerry's sched uled New York and Los Angeles star-studded fund-raiser concerts next week with everyone from Barbra Streisand to Whoopi Goldberg both scratched, but Jann Wenner's VIP cocktail party, which was to precede the June 10 Madison Square Garden affair and was to have everyone from Bette Midler to Paul Newman, was also scratched.
Tickets to both fund-raisers were slow. Tough for Kerry to catch a break. A convention coming up? Former President Clinton has a book coming out. These Los Angeles and Madison Square Garden concerts? Former President Reagan makes his final farewell. Trying for TV? Current President Bush is all over with D-Day. Hoping for mobs? Smarty Jones got the biggest overflow crowd ever. A week he's in town we had Tony Soprano, Tony Awards, even the marriage de jour of J.Lo to another Tony, Marc Anthony.
Incredible. If there was just one more civilian fatality, the Times would be screaming bloody murder. Thus the hypocrisy of the left, I suppose.
Bush may suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ....
Bush has shown a "lifelong streak of sadism," ranging from "childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs)" to "insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... [and] pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad." .... The rest of this tripe.
Wouldn't that just FROST the "Rock the Vote" crowd?
I stayed home yesterday from work to see the casket moved and for the ceremony and because I wanted to see the crowds of people paying their respects. I burst into tears too, when Nancy laid her cheek on the casket - and I was so heartened by Patti holding her hand throughout the service and holding her mom while at the casket - telling private things to each other and the younger comforting the older. It was really beautiful. I'm taking off Wed and Friday, too, not just because I hate to miss history, but because I want to feel the power of the man one more time.
Are you sure that didn't come from Nancy Pelosi's office? (she refuses to release any comment on Reagan's life and death - what a dried up 'ol prune she is, bless her heart.)
You're not corny. He wasn't corny. I'm not corny. We BELIEVE in the American spirit. We BELIEVE this is the greatest country on earth (and it is). We BELIEVE in being proud of Old Glory and we BELIEVE human life is valuable and is meant for purpose. Lastly, we BELIEVE good will eventually triumph over evil and we BELIEVE we have to be part of that fight. You are welcome in my foxhole anytime, sweets (and bring your pie recipes!).
Nancy Pelosi, NY Times, Radio Reloj, John Kerry ... who can tell? Birds of a feather.
That was just beautiful and you have me in tears.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.