DrunkMonkey

I feel about as effective as: "A one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest." "A three-legged cat trying to bury turds on a frozen pond."

IMHO: "Hate-Crime" Legislation is a roundabout way of criminalizing thoughts. Highly reminiscent of "1984." The actions are what ought to be illegal, not the thought behind them...

Nah, put him on multi-million dollar bearer bonds...

Anvil, et al...I do not agree with Mr. Rall. I read the article--I have my opinions on it, but I was looking for the opinions of others....So please don't crucify me...I just posted it...

It's a US Navy T44A: Clicky!

I'm not saying if I agree with this, just wanted to see what comments it would get... http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20040608 REAGAN'S SHAMEFUL LEGACY Mourn for Us, Not the Proto-Bush NEW YORK--For a few weeks, it became routine. I heard them dragging luggage down the hall. They paused in a little lounge near the dormitory elevator to bid farewell to people they'd met during their single semester. Those I knew knocked on my door. "What are you going to do?" I asked. "Where are you going to go?" A shrug. They were eighteen years old and their bright futures had evaporated. They had worked hard in junior and senior high school, harder than most, but none of that mattered now. President Reagan, explained the form letters from the Office of Financial Aid, had slashed the federal education budget. Which is why the same grim tableau of shattered hopes and dreams was playing itself out across the country. Colleges and universities were evicting their best and brightest, straight A students, stripping them of scholarships. Some transferred to less-expensive community colleges; others dropped into the low-wage workforce. Now, nearly a quarter century later, they are still less financially secure and less educated than they should have been. Our nation is poorer for having denied them their potential. They were by no means the hardest-hit victims of Reaganism. Reagan's quack economists trashed scholarships and turned welfare recipients into homeless people and refused to do anything about the AIDS epidemic, all so they could fund extravagant tax cuts for a tiny sliver of the ultra rich. Their supply-side sales pitch, that the rich would buy so much stuff from everybody else that the economy would boom and government coffers would fill up, never panned out. The Reagan boom lasted just three years and created only low-wage jobs. When the '80s were over, we were buried in the depths of recession and a trillion bucks in debt. Poverty grew, cities decayed, crime rose. It took over a decade to dig out. Reagan's defenders, people who don't know the facts or choose to ignore them, claim that "everybody" admired Reagan's ebullient personality even if some disagreed with his politics. That, like the Gipper's tall tales about welfare queens and "homeless by choice" urban campers, is a lie. Millions of Americans cringed at Reagan's simplistic rhetoric, were terrified that his anti-Soviet "evil empire" posturing would provoke World War III, and thought that his appeal to selfishness and greed--a bastardized blend of Adam Smith and Ayn Rand--brought out the worst in us. We rolled our eyes when Reagan quipped "There you go again"; what the hell did that mean? Given that he made flying a living hell (by firing the air traffic controllers and regulating the airlines), I'm not the only one who refuses to call Washington National Airport by its new name. His clown-like dyed hair and rouged cheeks disgusted us. We hated him during the dark days he made so hideous, and, with all due respect, we hate him still. Not everybody buys the myth that Reagan won the Cold War by demanding that Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this [Berlin] wall" or bankrupting the Soviet Union via the arms race--Zbigniew Brezinski's plot to "draw the Russians into the Afghan trap" by funding the mujahedeen, Chernobyl and covert U.S. schemes to destabilize the ruble had more to do with the end of the USSR. Gangsterism replaced the ossified cult of the state, millions of Russians were reduced to paupers, revived radical Islamism in Central Asia and eliminated our sole major ideological and military rival. That increased our arrogance and insularity, left us in charge of the world and to blame for everything, paving the road to 9/11. (Reagan even armed the attacks' future perpetrators.) Anyway, the Cold War isn't over. In which direction do you think those old ICBMs point today? The lionizers are correct about one thing: Reagan was one of our most influential presidents since FDR, whose New Deal safety net he carefully disassembled. He pioneered policies now being implemented by George W. Bush: trickle down economics, corporate deregulation, radicalizing the courts, slithering around inconvenient laws and international treaties. On the domestic front, he unraveled America's century-old social contract. What the poor needed was a kick in the ass, not a handout, said a president whose wealthy patrons bought him a house and put clothes on his wife Nancy. National parks were to be exploited for timber and oil, not protected. The federal tax code, originally conceived to redistribute wealth from top to bottom, was "reformed" to eradicate social justice. Bush also models his approach to foreign policy on that of the original Teflon President. Reagan elevated unjustifiable military action to an art. In 1983, anxious to look tough after cutting and running from Lebanon, Reagan sent marines to topple the Marxist government of Grenada. His pretext for invading this Caribbean island was the urgent plight of 500 medical students supposedly besieged by rampaging mobs. But when they arrived at the airport in the United States, the quizzical young men and women told reporters they were confused, never having felt endangered or seen any unrest. In a bizarre 1985 effort to free a few American hostages being held in Lebanon, Reagan authorized the sale of 107 tons of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, at the time one of our staunchest enemies, with the proceeds to be used to fund rightist death squads in Nicaragua--something Congress had expressly forbidden him to do. Evidence strongly suggests that Iran-Contra was at least his second dirty deal with Islamic Iran, the first being the October Surprise, which delayed the release of the Iranian embassy hostages until after the 1980 election was over. Ronald Reagan eventually admitted to "trading arms for hostages," yet avoided prosecution for treason and the death penalty. Reagan, like Bush 43, technically served in the military yet studiously avoided combat. Both men were physically robust, intellectually inadequate, poorly traveled former governors renowned for stabbing friends on the back--Reagan when he named names during McCarthyism. Both appointed former generals as secretaries of state and enemies of the environment to head the Department of the Interior. Both refused to read detailed briefings, worked short hours, behaved erratically in public appearances, ducked questions about sordid pasts, and relied on Christianist (the radical right equivalent of Islamist) depictions of foes as "evil" and America, invariably as embodied by himself and the Republicans, as "good." Based on intelligence as phony as that floated to justify the war against Iraq, Reagan bombed Muslim Libya.

A full 1.75L bottle of Kahlua. I've seen it happen...good thing it was not me that dropped it

I do not dislike Christianity... I dislike Ashcroft trying to create the Christian Taliban in the US. Can you point-by-point disprove anything I've said?

Gee, let's see: -Babbling in church and claiming God is making you "speak in tongues." Uh, yeah, right.... -Sexual repression that goes so far as to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars to buy a curtain to cover the Justice statue's bare breast... Ashcroft pandering to the Kristian Koalition by favoring a ban on abortion including cases of rape, incest, and danger to mom's life

Not true. That was a random unprovoked attack on Christianity. It has nothing to do with the topic at hand. You're attempt at attacking the faith of John Ashcroft in order to discredit him is an obvious misunderstanding of what his faith teaches concerning the law. Christians are to obey human law except where that human law violates God's Law. Our supreme duty is to obey God. Since God tells us to also obey human laws, we should. But, when they come in conflict, we are to "obey God rather than men." That doesn't give us a free ticket; however, to do what we want and say "I'm above the law because I'm Christian." I think it was meant that Ashcroft seems to inject his theology and dogma too often into a government that is supposed to be secular. His whackjob Pentecostal sect is not one I am comfortable having a follower as AG....

Paralysis from an injury Loneliness Poverty Not seeing 6/7 continents before I die (screw Antarctica)

Huh? Was there supposed to be an attachment?

Give ya ten bucks for your FF suit...

There's a lot of stuff in skydiving that is worse than dying. There's almost dying. Yeah...Para/Quadraplegia comes to mind... I'd sooner be dead than to live the balance of my life like Christopher Reeve.

Yeah, Tribal--did you? If this is true, my sympathy/empathy for you has evaporated. If you did intentionally/needlessly chop at 1500', you're a dumbass and your gene pool is in need of chlorine...

My Grandfather was working in a factory, making B-17 parts. He was not drafted because he was the sole supporter of his mom and siblings, his father having passed away before the war.

-Paid off my car. -Got promoted to Captain. -Started my pilot's license (90% complete). -Went to Mexico on my first cruise on a big ship, instead of a windjammer. -Got orders to move to New Mexico. -Went to New Orleans for the first time. -Soloed in a C-172.

-Take a dump on the desk of the guy who fired you -Glue the bathroom door shut -get a sack full of mice, and let them loose in the building -put maple syrup on all the phone handles in the office etc....

To GOPers-he was not a god. Stop deifying him. To Dems-Show some respect. a former POTUS just died.

I disagree. When someone gets juvenile like the person did towards TribalTalon, one stops giving a fuck about feedback from that particular person, not overall. That is an important distinction...

Who da hell would let a drunk Marine with a Ka-Bar anywhere near his yam bag??? WTF?

Holy shit! That's a 5 minute walk from my parents' house! (not kidding)... I may have to have a "discussion" with my sister....dammit!

Popes don't retire. They serve until they're taken out of the Vatican feet first...

What?!? You didn't get your Hos issued to you when you got here?!? Call the INS--you've been cheated. Insist on getting your six-pack of Hos, your pimpmobile, and your 40-oz...

Q: How do you know a Frenchman has been in your backyard? A: Your garbage can is empty and your dog is pregnant.