What was Ronald Reagan's most impressive achievement?

[Sandpiper]

For myself, I'm going to have to go with what he did to the national debt.

I mean he took a 200 year cumulative national debt and managed to increase it by 189% in only 8 years! In only 1/25th of the time, he managed to almost triple what taken 200 years.

Nobody's come close to that. Not even Shrub.

[HEyHEY]

1. Well, befriending a Monkey would be pretty tough...

He managed that.

[JI7]

3. he became friends with gwbush ?

[HEyHEY]

4. Good thing I wasn't drinking anything there

[Djinn]

7. Reagan & Chimpy sitting in a tree....

Can a photo be more apt than Reagan bottle feeding Chimpy

[HEyHEY]

8. Wow, you could roller skate on that haridoo

[Hepburn]

15. LOL...the hair.....

We used to get pics of Reagan and color them green and he freaking looked like Gumby!! BTW: I was in college when we were doing this!!

[Stargleamer]

24. "Bedtime for Bonzo"!!!

His greatest role!!!

Honorable mentions:

1. Playing "The Gipper" in "Knute Rockne, All-American"
2. Death Valley Days

[Djinn]

25. Also inspired a great Ramones song

"Bonzo goes to bitburg"

"If there’s one thing that makes me sick it’s when someone tries to hide behind politics
I wish that time could go by fast somehow they manage to make it last"

Any man that goes to pay his "respects" to dead Nazi's can hardly expect respect.

[Syrinx]

2. ostensibly the fall of the Soviet empire through massive military spending

But I have my doubts. Would it have happened regardless? We'll never know for sure.

[Sirveri]

5. actually Carter helped that the most

SALT 2 drastically cut the ammount of warheads we could have, while allowing the soviets to build substantially more, and thus create a even higher debt load.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. Carter's boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics

also deprived the Soviets of millions of dollars that they could have funneled into their military complex.

At any rate, a detailed examination of the Soviet system strongly indicated that it was headed for a downfall. My Soviet Geography teacher, for example, was predicting the collapse of the USSR as early as 1982. An expert on the USSR who I knew at another university also made the same observation, noting that for decades the system had been completely ignoring the consumer (worker) while devoting its manufacturing system to the production of military and aerospace materials, and parts for other factories!

[maggrwaggr]

26. It's pure BS. He took credit for something he had nothing to do with

Say I live in a neighborhood with a punk rock band that likes to rehearse next door.

I build a big brick wall, 30 feet high, around my house. I spend thousands and thousands of dollars on it, more than I can even afford.

Then the punk rock band moves away.

Was it my wall that made them move?

Sure! In my fantasy world! They saw that wall and By God they knew I meant business!

Sheeeeeeeesh.

You know what is so fucking disgusting is that so many people believe this bullshit!!!

Reagan had nothing to do WHATSO FUCKING EVER with the fall of the Iron Curtain. It fell of its own weight.

[Syrinx]

27. you know the word "ostensibly" right?

[maggrwaggr]

29. Why did you post it if you weren't looking for responses?

[Syrinx]

31. Respond all you want

I'm just trying to get DU off the hate vibe it's on lately.

[Geo55]

6. His best role

Commander in Chief (oscar material)

[Senior citizen]

9. He was a prophet

In co-starring with a chimp he foretold how he would go down in history.

[WillyT]

11. Turning Ketchup Into A Vegetable Was A Pretty Neat Trick !!!

:shrug:

[madrchsod]

12. staying awake...

really- my dad who was several years younger than him claimed ronny slept thru most of the afternoon ,just like he did..while ron was sleeping bush and his klan were setting policy and running the government

[rucky]

13. The Presidential Afternoon Nap

was pretty impressive


Jelly Bellys are gooooooood

[neebob]

14. He inspired people to buy Boraxo and wash their hands with it

Yeah, I know I said this on another thread, but anyone who's ever washed their hands with Boraxo must realize what an impressive achievement that is.

[leftofthedial]

16. getting away with Iran Contra was pretty impressive

and the Savings and Loan debacle transferred something like a trillion dollars into Ronnie's fellow conmen's hands.

[maggrwaggr]

30. Yeah. "STAYING OUT OF JAIL" = his biggest accomplishment

Let us not make the same mistake this time.

Can you imagine if Chimpy died in a few years and the media was acting this way?

[JohnnyFianna1]

17. Inspiring those welfare queens and mentally ill to go out and commit crime

as opposed to just talking about it. But really, it was in 1986, when he eliminated hundreds of Tax Deductions and stopped taxing everyone who made under $10,000.

[westsidexview]

18. his unflinching support of jelly beans

[deacon]

19. Tripling the deficits n/t

[borison]

20. being responsible for the deaths of millions of people

Ronald Reagan was a hateful, homophobic bastard. He totally ignored the AIDS crisis out of his own bigotry. He let extreme right wing religious maniacs define our national health policty and effectively delayed safe-sex information from being widely distributed because it was deemed too sexucally explicit. Just think what could have been if he had the human decency to face the problem and deal with it when it first reared it's ugly head. How many millions of people would be alive today around the world. Including my late lover who was infected during the period after the medical establishment knew it could be stopped with condoms and before the information was finally released.

In my mind he was, is, and always will be a most hateful, murdering, idiotic fool.

This Reagan love fest that the media is shoving down our throats makes me want to puke.

[neebob]

21. This may be a little premature

but it seems to me he foiled Chimpy's plan to confuse everyone on the difference between World War II and the War on Terror and get them saving cans to tie knots in Saddam's tail and stuff.

My mom told me she walked in a parade carrying a sign that said, "Save cans ... tie a knot in Hitler's tail." Unfortunately, I was too young to think to ask what it meant, so I've been wondering ever since.

[JVS]

22. not recalling

[flaminbats]

23. Being in charge of the SAG...

"Deeply depressed over the divorce and unhappy with his flagging movie career, Reagan continued his association with SAG. He served as president of the group from 1947-52 and again from 1959-60, when he led a long and successful strike against studios to win pay for actors when their movies were put on television.

It was also through SAG that he met Nancy Davis, a young actress whose name had mistakenly appeared on Hollywood lists as a communist sympathizer. In 1949, she appealed to the SAG president for help in clearing her name."

<http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/reagan/stories/bio.part.two/index.html>

The fact he was willing to help organize these strikes and stand up for the actors being labeled as Communists in this union shows he had some courage. His leadership of the Screen Actors Guide impresses me more than anything else he has done. Going into politics was the greatest mistake of Reagan IMHO.

[dryan]

38. Suggestion...

Read "When Hollywood Had a King" for the true story. Reagan agreed to waivers that deprived actors out of residuals.

[opihimoimoi]

28. More l;ike 10 times. The National debt went from 350 billion to 3.5 Trill

dollars in 8 years.

[iangb]

32. Osama bin Laden

...whom Ronnie trained and equipped.

.....or maybe Saddam Hussein whom Ronnie helped.

.....or Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Perle whom Ronnie encouraged in their belief of US World supremacy.

[The Backlash Cometh]

33. He brought back old fashion values. Specifically, racism.

It was okay to fear fear itself again under Reagan.

[Lou_C]

34. Being able to speak on cue

:shrug:

[JVS]

35. He had an amazing number of benign colon polyps

[Forkboy]

37. LMFAO

:thumbsup: :evilgrin:

[Piperay]

36. Stealing Carter's briefing

book in time for the debate so that he knew ahead of time how Carter would answer every question. :mad: