CNN's Cooper and Gupta Bemoan Reagan's Indifference to AIDS(CNN's INDIFFERENCE to the FACTS)

MRC ^ | Thursday June 10, 2004 | BrentBaker

[fight_truth_decay]

On Tuesday night CNN devoted a segment of Anderson Cooper 360 to how, as CNN's Dr, Sanjay Gupta put it, throughout his presidency "many would accuse President Reagan of ignoring AIDS," as if Reagan talking about it would have done more to prevent it than those in the homosexual community modifying their unsafe sex practices. Leading into a Reagan clip from 1987, Gupta complained that "the first time President Reagan would utter the word AIDS in public would be well into his second term, six years after the virus was discovered." In fact, Reagan talked about AIDS in 1985 and cited it repeatedly in his 1986 State of the Union address. Gupta relayed how one "AIDS activist" believes "the administration avoided AIDS all those years because of homophobia."

Interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, Cooper pointed out how "the San Francisco Chronicle said that Ronald Reagan was guilty, and I quote, of a 'shameful abdication of leadership in the fight against AIDS.'" When Fauci wasn't sufficiently anti-Reagan, Cooper reminded him: "The criticism is that earlier on in 1981 or '82, they had been more vocal they might have made a difference. I think part of the anger, too, is that Reagan's communication director, Pat Buchanan, you know, was quoted as saying in print that AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals."

Unmentioned by CNN, how, as Deroy Murdock conveyed on National Review Online: "In a Congressional Research Service study titled 'AIDS Funding for Federal Government Programs: FY1981-FY1999,' author Judith Johnson found that overall, the federal government spent $5.727 billion on AIDS under Ronald Reagan. This higher number reflects President Reagan's proposals as well as additional expenditures approved by Congress that he later signed."

For Murdock's piece, which quotes Reagan's comments about AIDS in 1985 and 1986, as well as how Patti Davis denied her father was any kind of homophobe: http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/murdock200406081045.asp

(Cooper's segment on Reagan and AIDS aired the same night, MRC analyst Ken Shepherd noticed, that he devoted a story to the suddenly wise Nancy Reagan for opposing President Bush on stem cell research. He introduced that story: "Well, as President Bush remembers Ronald Reagan, he is also reminding America of his admiration of the Republican icon and of course, Reagan's wife Nancy, as well. But there is one sticky subject where the president and the wife of the former president part company, stem cell research. It is an anathema to many conservatives, but to a woman who just lost her beloved husband to Alzheimer's, it is a topic that transcends 'Raw Politics.'")

[megatherium]

Thanks a bunch!! Terrific article.

[megatherium]

NPR..laughs..sorry.

True, true. I couldn't decide if Haynes Johnson was full of it or not. His take was, don't blame Reagan, he didn't know about it until Hudson passed away. But Johnson wrote the book "Sleepwalking Through History", which I suppose is not the most positive take on the Reagan years <grin>.

[nonliberal]

A friend's husband who was a hemophiliac contracted it either from his meds or a blood transfusion in 83 or 84.

Didn't the gays and the ACLU block early screening of the blood supply on "right to privacy" grounds?

[patriciaruth]

Homophobe?

What nonsense!

Merv Giffin has been best friends of the Reagans for decades, and will be a pallbearer. It is well-known in Hollywood that he is homosexual.

[supercat]

The funding for AIDS was relatively small before 1985, several million per year. Public health people were well aware that the situation was ominous -- the case load was small (a few thousand) before 1985, but growing exponentially. There were scientists urgently calling for more funding but for several years they were not heeded.

Gay activists did far more to encourage the spread of disease than any amount of funding could have done to stop it.

[Holden Magroin]

The homosexual movement wants America to believe that Reagan, not homosexual sodomy - an unnatural, unsanitary sex act - is responsible for the spread of AIDS. Homosexuals want to have their cake and eat it, too; they want to engage in unnatural, unsanitary sex acts, then plunder the federal treasury when they get infected.

[Andy'smom]

It is also well known that CNN's Anderson Cooper is gay.

[patriciaruth]

NOBODY suspected back then that we'd still have this disease 20 years later

Ahem, I'm sure I wasn't the only doctor that suspected it was a virus, and knew there was no "antibiotic" for viral diseases, and that we didn't even have the basic scientific knowledge to figure out how to kill viruses without killing the host, as viruses are about as close to naked DNA as a "living" thing can get.

Also, many of us even knew that viruses and prions may not really fit the criteria for "life," that they may just be organic chemicals that can replicate and cause infection.

I specifically remember warning people that we would need a once in a century type genius to make the mental breakthrough to even begin to fight the disease. I was very much in favor of controlling it by making it a reportable disease and having the public health department confidentially track down all exposed people, like they have discretely done for decades with TB, venereal diseases, and other communicable diseases.

But the gay community made that illegal, and the millions of deaths and disability extra will always be on the heads of the gay activists would put their politics ahead of the lives and well-being of millions.

[patriciaruth]

My husband and I don't live in Hollywood any more, so we are out of touch now.

[Jaded]

Ron jr was doing the PSA's with the banana and condom. How far back was that?

[megatherium]

Gay activists did far more to encourage the spread of disease than any amount of funding could have done to stop it.

Absolutely! Especially early on, the denial in the homosexual community was incredible. The 1980s generation of gay men did change their behavior to a large extent, slowing the epidemic somewhat. But the current generation is said to have reverted back to the promiscuity of the generation before AIDS, and this has public health people worried.

[Jaded]

Aren't heterosexual-black women the new high risk group because of their bi-sexual husbands and their 'lowdown lifestyle'. Recently on the local ABC affiliate they did a series called "The Lowdown Lifestyle" about how all these women are getting AIDS from their husbands. Of course, the bi-sexual cheating scum don't seem to feel bad about giving their wives the disease. It's just so hard on them to balance their desires/images.

[megatherium]

I've read about that, HIV is spreading alarmingly in the rural south among poor black people. The AIDS virus needs only one thing to propogate: a class of people who are promiscuous. If enough people have sex with enough people, HIV will spread. Anal sex is a particularly effective way of transmitting the virus, but it's not necessary for an epidemic to take hold.

The same thing is happening on a much more terrifying scale in sub-Saharan Africa, where 20% or more of the adults in a number of different countries have the virus. Tens or hundreds of millions will die of this disease, and there is basically nothing that can be done to prevent this.

One bright note in Africa: Uganda has limited the spread of the virus by promoting abstinence. (Their campaign is called "ABC" -- Abstain, Be faithful, or use a Condom. Actually, the first two letters are the most important because condoms are not readily available in rural Africa.)

I understand that Christianity is spreading like wildfire in Africa. I pray that this is true, and that this changes the morality in Africa to stop this disease.

[Inkie]

The perpetual lie about Reagan and AIDS by people in the gay community who don't want facts to get in the way. AIDS was identified in 1981. In the next 8 years, the Federal government spent $6 billion dollars on AIDS research. That's BILLION, with a B. Those were the days when a billion dollars was a LOT of money. This amount was more than that spent on federal research for any other single disease. It does not include research by private companies.

What got up gays' noses was the fact that Reagan would not endorse their lifestyle as on a par with a heterosexual lifestyle. Gays don't want mere tolerance; they want endorsement. Their whole Reagan-hatred shtick is nothing more than self-pity from people who want what they want when they want it, regardless of the repercussions to themselves, other individuals and the community at large.

[John Lenin]

Imagine if the nation suddenly learned that, as governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton knowingly oversaw the illicit sale of state prison blood to Canadian hemophiliacs and others -- spreading AIDS and other deadly diseases to hundreds, perhaps thousands, in the 1980s.

My guess is that a scandal like that could potentially do more than destroy President Clinton's historical legacy. It could ruin Al Gore's chances for succession. It could set back the Democratic Party nationally for a decade. It could help Americans regain their senses and reconstitute their naturally healthy skepticism of government benevolence.

It seems someone is trying very hard to make sure Americans never reach such conclusions.

Last week, as reported exclusively in the Ottawa Citizen and WorldNetDaily, two crimes occurred within hours of each other hundreds of miles apart that raise questions as to whether someone is attempting to silence those who have tried to expose just such a real-life scandal.

Blood scandal and Clinton's plumbers

[Southack]

President Reagan spent more to fight AIDS than he did to fight Alzhiemer's, the disease that killed him.

He cared more for the least among us than for himself.

[Southack]

Who publicly mentioned AIDS first, Reagan or Clinton or Carter or Kerry?

[fight_truth_decay]

"Sleeping Through History" left out many important parts Reagan's presidency, Lebanon, Grenada with a brief touch on Iran Contra.

The focus of the book is more focused the increase in the national debt not Lebanon, Grenada or much on the Iran Contra. Nixon, Ford, and Carter had left us big government, easy money, soaring expenditures on "Great Society" income-redistribution programs, a regulatory regime that invaded every industry, and confiscatory state-federal tax rates that in some cases exceeded 80 percent. The Reagan "fix it" formula was tax-rate cuts, free trade, more entrepreneur and business friendly, and the dollar was as good as gold again. Did it mention victory in the Cold War..describing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," the "focus of evil in the modern world." Horrified,that remark brought the sensitive liberal intellectual elite out of the woodwork.

1982 the Dow Jones had hit a low of 800. After the final nip and tuck of his tax cuts were installed, the market sored upward for 18 years - the Dow rose from 800 to 10,000 — creating between $15 trillion and $20 trillion in new wealth and industries. The Dow would have to climb to 100,000 by 2020 to match Reagan's economic performance. As a result U.S. companies became far more productive investing more money into research and development; therefore, more profitable, and investors..yes Reagan made it possible for many Americans to start investing and reap the new fortunes for which the Clinton(the Fox) Booster Club likes to lay claim to having achieved for us.

Reagen's newly recovered economy created 15 million new jobs. Textbooks still argue that Reagen's (the Hedgehog) economic policies were flawed because they created record budget deficits (social programs mentioned above) failing to mention that as the national debt rose by $2 trillion, national wealth rose by $8 trillion... nor to mention the Laffer curve achieved lower tax rates generating more tax revenues at the federal and state levels. Free men and free enterprise(Hedgehog-one big idea and getting it done). Federal tax collections rose from $500 billion in 1980 to $1 trillion in 1990.

Johnson wrote of the threat of other countries to the US economically (writing this book 1987- 1991). He didn't know at the time that Japan would go into a recessive sleep for the next 10 years. True, the upscale jewelry and designer stores in Hawaii,for example, a favorite spot for the Japanese to vacation; saw a loss from the Japanese trade, but now American's had more money to spend on such luxury items and did so freely.

When Johnson wrote Reagan said "I do not recall", he was well into the stages of Senility.

Sources: http://www.newcriterion.com/weblog/armavirumque.html
President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime by Lou Cannon
Berlin, Sir Isaiah (1953), The Hedgehog and the Fox, New York, Simon & Schuster
http://www.nationalreview.com/

[supercat]

Of course, the bi-sexual cheating scum don't seem to feel bad about giving their wives the disease. It's just so hard on them to balance their desires/images.

I wonder if liberalism hasn't infected these people's minds and souls to the point that they don't see AIDS as a bad thing? They've conditioned themselves to believe that they don't have to worry about protecting themselves (in any sense of the word) because whatever happens to them will be someone else's fault; the worse the fates that befall them, the more at fault everyone else is.

For some reason, I am reminded of the class-action "milk pricing" lawsuit that was filed against Jewel and Dominok's for the fact that they charged about $3 for a gallon of milk while some other stores were charging $2. In its reply, Jewel or Dominick's noted that they have no knowledge of whether the plaintiffs purchased milk from them, but if the plaintiffs did purchase milk from them for $3 rather than from someone else for $2, and if the plaintiff's were damaged thereby, such damage was entirely a consequence of the plaintiff's own deliberate failure to mitigate it.

For some reason, the concept of "mitigating damages" seems to be foreign in today's world. Odd.

[fight_truth_decay]

..sorry stammered at the beginning or my comment to you..sleep is needed!