Ronald Reagan dies

To Regan's family and friends; sympathy and consolations, as is deserved at this time. Reagan, the person, will be grieved for by his family and they deserve no disrespect. Regan, the ex-president, deserves at least the honour of recognition for serving in that position.




However...

Does anyone recall that Nancy was/is a strong believer in astrologers psychics and tarot and talkers-with-the-dead and stuff? So how long do you think it will be before she starts getting messages...?
 
charley_bigtime said:
And I ask again. What length of time makes it "nice".

More than ten minutes Tricky. I would suggest an adequate timespan would be until after a funeral has been held.
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They never held a funeral for Hitler. Shall I say only nice things about him? I wouldn't want to disrespect the dear chap.
 
My semi-personal encounter with Reagan

OK, it wasn't actually me who encountered him, but it was a friend, and I witnessed it.

February 1980. Reagan was running for President in the New Hampshire Republican primary. It was the Saturday before the primary, and I was in the old Holiday Inn in Manchester N.H. for a day-long, non-political function. We had rented the space almost a year in advance, knowing that there would be a lot of demand for it that weekend, because of the intense campaigning. Adding to the atmosphere, there was an intense snowstrom going on outside.

As we're setting up that morning, several Secret Service agents entered the lobby. (Our function was being held in a room off the lobby, and we were using space in the lobby for registration.) They checked out the place, asked a few questions, then about an hour later, Ted Kennedy came through to hold a press conference in another room. Lots of reporters of course.

After he left, it got quiet again for awhile, but we were informed that Ronald Reagan would be holding a press conference in that same room at about 4 p.m. So we had Secret Service all over the place all day long. They weren't too obtrusive though, and we had no problem with continuing our function.

About 4, I was out in the lobby, talking with a couple of friends. We had been busy all day and weren't thinking much about Reagan's impending visit. One of my friends went down the hall to the bathroom. A few moments later, Reagan and his entourage arrived. They came through the lobby and down the hall, passing the aforemention bathroom. At this very moment, my friend stepped out of the bathroom, unintentionally and directly into Reagan's path. Reagan stepped on my friend's foot. He didn't act as though he even noticed, just kept going. But two S.S. guys grabbed my friend and shoved him back into the bathroom. I was scared sh!tless that my friend was going to get dragged away for questioning. But after a couple of minutes, the bathroom door opened and they let him go. He said they just asked him his name and why he was in the hotel, and I guess they were satisfied he wasn't a terrorist or nutcase.
 
Zep said:

Does anyone recall that Nancy was/is a strong believer in astrologers psychics and tarot and talkers-with-the-dead and stuff? So how long do you think it will be before she starts getting messages...?
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I think she would look very out of place at the funeral with all her tarot cards and oui ja boards on top of his coffin.
If she has that much faith in that garbage, then I challenge her to go ahead with it and make an ass of herself in the eulogy.

CDR
 
Re: My semi-personal encounter with Reagan

At this very moment, my friend stepped out of the bathroom, unintentionally and directly into Reagan's path. Reagan stepped on my friend's foot. He didn't act as though he even noticed, just kept going.

...as he should have. Rude, yes; but the last thing the secret service would like him to do would be to stop and apologize to an unknown man who had just unexpectedly stepped into his path, for rather obvious reasons. I'm surprised they didn't have anybody IN the bathroom BEFORE Reagan was there.
 
Zep said:

However...

Does anyone recall that Nancy was/is a strong believer in astrologers psychics and tarot and talkers-with-the-dead and stuff? So how long do you think it will be before she starts getting messages...?
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You know van Pragh, Edward, and Silvia Brown must have hard-ons the size of the Washington Monument right now. (Yes, Silvia too. Don't tell me you never suspected.)
 
Cleon said:


You know van Pragh, Edward, and Silvia Brown must have hard-ons the size of the Washington Monument right now. (Yes, Silvia too. Don't tell me you never suspected.)
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Oh yes, I'm sure they can't wait to start pissing on this particular grave.


Anyway...I'm really shocked here that, among several people who I consider to be the "good" guys here...so many of them turn into trollish, ugly backbiters the minute someone who disagrees with their personal politics becomes an issue. They act as though we're talking about Hitler or some other murderer instead of an American who tried to help the country.

Why are there so few people who can say that they disagreed with the man, but grieve for his loss? I do.

If you only respect the people who completely agree with you, then you really don't respect anyone.
 
When asked by his advisors to attend the funeral of Leoniid Brezhnev (sp?), Reagan replied: "Why? I ddn't like him when he was alive, I'm not going to lie about it now."

While I will refrain from saying anytthing positive or negative about the man, I do believe that anyone who says this in life is fair game for the slings and arrows of this board in death.
 
He was probably serious when, speaking about illegal aid to Nicaragua's right-wing rebels, funded by secret weapons sales to Iran, he told the nation: "I told the American people I did not trade arms for (US hostages in Iran). My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
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http://theage.com.au/

It was all just one big, feel good, family oriented soap opera. In Australia, we call it 'neighbours'.



fr_ronnie,0.jpg
 
Zep said:
To Regan's family and friends; sympathy and consolations, as is deserved at this time. Reagan, the person, will be grieved for by his family and they deserve no disrespect. Regan, the ex-president, deserves at least the honour of recognition for serving in that position.




However...

Does anyone recall that Nancy was/is a strong believer in astrologers psychics and tarot and talkers-with-the-dead and stuff? So how long do you think it will be before she starts getting messages...?
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Half his family might not even be too upset about it, either.
 
shemp said:


I don't have to live up to your, or anyone else's, goddamn expectations.
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I don't expect you to. I only expect you to live up to the standards you have set for yourself.

BTW: Interesting tale about the Secret Service, and Reagan. Spooky. The more things change...
 
Cheebus Christmas Evil Dave what do You really think? hehehe

I have an idea, why don't we let this corpse go and start a thread where we can separate the mortal man from his office and critique policies and actions that President Reagan begot, with a dispassionate eye . Like Homer Simpson said "You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!”.
 
It's my experience that the dead don't mind much, whatever is said of them.

Yet again you managed to nmiss the point.



After all, Reagan can't get upset for himself, and probably hasn't been able to interpret things that could have been affronts to him for at least a few years. Reagan quite literally 'died' when his Alzheimer's disease made him a vegetable.

Still missing it.

Now you're all upset because I am not showing enough 'respect' for him in your opinion. I'll file that away with other people's 'opinions' of how other people 'should have' reacted to affronts. In this case, it's DEAD people.

Nope. Still off.

Reagan was not 10,000 people's worth of interpretation of affronts to his holiness and sacred memory.

Yet another false assumption about how I felt about the guy.

Nothing you say about your sacred image of the Legendary Reagan matters to me now.

Ditto.

Let me repeat: Reagan has been dead for some time. I see no reason to suddenly get upset about it NOW that his delayed composting cycle has begun.

I'm not. It's his family I feel for.

You really are a prat aren't you?
 
Originally posted by Tricky
If any of you have ever read the excellent sci-fi book by Orson Scott Card called Speaker for the Dead you may understand where I am coming from. Speak the truth as you see it. Let not the fact that the person is dead make you color your speech. Say the good and the bad. I cannot find too much good to say about Reagan, other than he was "beloved". I realize my opinions are politically derived, but there they are.
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Read it, and most of the other works by the same author.

Had you attempted to summarize the entirety of the mans life, you might approached what OSC had in mind. You didn’t, you only gave the criticism.
 
Mycroft said:


Read it, and most of the other works by the same author.

Had you attempted to summarize the entirety of the mans life, you might approached what OSC had in mind. You didn’t, you only gave the criticism.
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Another good point.
 
Patti Davis: A Daughter's Remembrance
...
Eventually, I grew beyond the girl who wanted more from her father than he was able to give. I began to focus on the gifts he gave me. He taught me to talk to God, to read the stars, respect the cycles of nature. I am a strong swimmer and a decent horsewoman because of him. I plucked from the years the shiniest memories, strung them together. It's what you do with someone who is always a bit out of reach. You content yourself with moments; you gather them, treasure them. They are the gemstones of the years you shared.
...

I have learned, over time, that the people who leave us a little bit hungry are the people we remember most vividly. When they are alive, we reach for them; when they die, some part of us follows after them. My father believed in cycles—the wheel of birth, and life, and death, constantly turning. My hand was tiny when he held it in his and led me to a blackened field weeks after a fire had burned part of our ranch. He showed me green shoots peeking out of the ashes. New life. I let go of his hand for too long, pushed it away, before finally grasping it again, trusting that even in his dying, I would find new life.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5147743/site/newsweek/
 
Tricky said:
I just heard on the news that Ronald Reagan just died. While he hasn't been really alive mentally for some years, this is really too bad. Now I will have to listen to endless streams of testemonials about what a great president he was.

While I don't wish death on anyone, I will not praise him in death when I found him so totally despicable in life. He is simply the worst president of the last 50 years. At least he was until Dubya. raised the bar.
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:( Not sure how to respond. I find it wrong to put people on pedestals. Reagan's spot on that pedestal is certainly belied by his faults but Reagan transended most people. His was a life of service and greatness. He honestly believed in his positions and stood up for his convictions unapoligetically. He was willing to be proud of being an American at a time when to do so was considered incorect. He made us proud to be Americans again. He stood up to the most dangerous empire in the 20th century and did not blink. He won the cold war and ended stagflation. Carter's mailase turned into American pride and we knew that we truly were a shining city on a hill.

Yes he had his problems as did Lincoln, Roosevelt, Ike and others but he was so much more than his faults. I'm saddned at his loss. And I'm saddned that you were so quick to attack him after his death. I have always had so much respect for you tricky, I guess I shouldn't have put you on a pedestal either.

RandFan
 
evildave said:
Very quotable quotes, all in all. I don't see a reason to give such people a 'second chance' for more power. I don't see a reason to respect such retarded world-views from people who believe they can summon their "Jesus" demon to start everything over again "all better" after they literally do everything they can to destroy the world.

Screw Reagan
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:( Myopic. Humans have a way of making mistakes. Lincoln certainly did and was hated by many. Many presidents have made many gaffes or held positions that when viewed by themselves loom larger than they actually are. By your logic screw all politicians and presidents. Lets just hate anyone who we disagree with and find any and all reasons to justify that hate. Clinton will always be hated by those on the right who see any and all of his warts. Screw Clinton or Crarter my friends and family will say when they (Clinton and Carter) pass on. Are we so jaded that we can't be critical but also acknowledge the contributions made by all presidents?
 
To those who hate Reagan so deeply,

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stre[t]ching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

--Abraham Lincoln
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It is easy to hate or despise. I have no respect for such positions that seek only despisement and contempt. Where are the better angels of our nature?

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

--H.W. Longfellow
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I'm not stupid enough to suppose that all people will come to admire Reagan. I am perhaps Naive enough to hope that the better angels of our nature will allow us to see beyond the frailties and arrogance of each other and to be willing to reestablish our bond of affection that Lincoln spoke so eloquently about.

It is easy to love those who love you. It is important to care for those who are not your friends or loved ones.

--Christ (paraphrased)
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I always thought that it was a proud tradition amongst liberals to be willing to forgive others. It is what I have admired most about that ideology and envious that it was not embodied more by those on the right.

Today I am deeply saddened and disillusioned as to the liberal claim of compassion and tolerance. Has that always been just empty rhetoric? I think I know better.

I was saddened when I heard Reagan had died. I am much more so having read this thread (parts of it, I can't bear to read it all).

I think it best if I find some place else to honor my memory of Reagan.
 
RandFan said:
To those who hate Reagan so deeply,

It is easy to hate or despise. I have no respect for such positions that seek only despisement and contempt. Where are the better angels of our nature?

I'm not stupid enough to suppose that all people will come to admire Reagan. I am perhaps Naive enough to hope that the better angels of our nature will allow us to see beyond the frailties and arrogance of each other and to be willing to reestablish our bond of affection that Lincoln spoke so eloquently about.

I always thought that it was a proud tradition amongst liberals to be willing to forgive others. It is what I have admired most about that ideology and envious that it was not embodied more by those on the right.

Today I am deeply saddened and disillusioned as to the liberal claim of compassion and tolerance. Has that always been just empty rhetoric? I think I know better.

I was saddened when I heard Reagan had died. I am much more so having read this thread (parts of it, I can't bear to read it all).

I think it best if I find some place else to honor my memory of Reagan.
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RandFan,

Despite being on the opposite end of the political spectrum, you have once more garnered my deep respect with the above quote. I am a liberal and deeply trobled by certain aspects of Reagan's presidency. Still, I believe that he also contributed a great deal to certain GOOD turns in American and World history - his firm stand in the cold war not the least among them. I could never understand the protesters in my own home country (Germany) who did not want Pershings stationed here - fortunately, our then-chancellor Helmut Schmidt stood firm against his own political party in allowing them on German soil.

For Reagan's contributions to woldwide peace (ahieved through great risk) and liberty, I am willing to forgive his misdeeds (Iran-Contra et al) which we can't change toady anymore ANYWAY. I respect him as an American president who did his best in service to the country - even though he clearly violated the law in his pursuit to do so and should have been stopped (impeached) at that point.

Best ones and a salute to Mr. Reagan,
- m.
 
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