Reply #36: Hmmm...my memory is usually pretty good.

[Osito]

1) Do you remember Zbigniew Brzezinski? Carter's NSA chief? He is part of a group who orchestrated the fall of the Soviet Union by bankrupting the regime. He angled to get USSR involved in Afghanistan. He also proposed an arms race that would keep the Soviets impoverished. How do I know? Brzezinski wrote about the tactics prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Try reading the "Grand Failure" which pretty much predicted the collapse several years before it happened. Reagan was pursuing the same strategy as Brezinski wrote about. Seems to me that if a person explains his strategy up front, gives specifics reasons and milestones, then history unfolds in just that way, it would stand to reason that that person might be right.

2) "economy totally tanked"? Huh? Would this be the same economy that generated record tax revenues after tax rate cuts? This doesn't wash. Economy didn't tank under Reagan. Now, if you want to say that skyrocketing deficits in Reagan's second term led to economic difficulties later, I'm with you.

3) Union busting? I guess you are referring to the Air traffic Controllers. (Please note that I worked with union ATC's in the early 1980's.) Are you forgetting that he was a union leader himself? That he supported unions more times than not as Governor of California? I am unhappy with the ATC situation, but I'd like to think I was honest enough to recognize what really happened.


I'm not a "they're ALL bad, and we're ALL good" kind of guy. More like a "they're MOSTLY bad, and we're MOSTLY good" kind. If we want to be taken seriously, and get back into power, we are going to have to be careful about broad-brushing everything. We have plenty of good arguments, we don't need to be pushing "iffy" ideas.