the first Marlboro Man...er...Chesterfield Man ...
a Hollywood Huckster
who would endorse absolutely anything for a fast buck
... from ...
"Van Heusen Shirts" to "20-Mule-Team BORAX"
to "Domeliners" to "General Electric" ...
the face of foolishness & befuddlement itself ...
a man President Nixon once called "strange"
and "unpleasant to be around"...
a B-Movie actor...
married to two different actresses!
Yes, Ronald Reagan was the first ... in fact, the only ...
US President in our 229 years as a nation
to divorce his first wife ...
and the first to take a second wife!
HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD!
Before God, I, Ronald Reagan,
take you, Jane Wyman, and you, Nancy Davis, to be my wedded wives.
To have and to hold only you, from this day forward,
for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health,
to love and to cherish 'till death do us all part.
And hereto I pledge you and ...er... you... my faithfulness.
a man Tubby-Tele-vangelist Jerry Falwell
called his "favorite Christian."
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The Whole Wide World In His Hands
 Reagan was a firm believer in Biblical prophecy;
specifically, he believed that the end of the world -- the Battle of Armageddon -- was close at
hand.
While he was running for office in 1980, candidate Reagan announced during an
interview with televangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker that
"We may be the generation that sees Armageddon." But that certainly
wouldn't be the last time.
In an interview published in a December 1983 issue of People magazine,
the most powerful man in the world revealed that:
"Theologians had been studying the ancient prophecies -- what
would portend the coming of Armageddon-- and have said that never, in the time
between the prophecies up untiI now, has there ever been a time in which so many
of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when
people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything
like this."
He was also an ardent supporter of school prayer and anti-abortion laws. He
withheld funding from international contraception programs. Over complaints by
the ACLU, he officially declared 1983 to be "The Year of the Bible." And he
appointed likeminded Jesus followers to his cabinet. During a 1981 Congressional
hearing, Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, revealed the
depth of his commitment to preserving America's environment for posterity:
"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before
the Lord returns."
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a man whose first autobiography
asked the very question
asked by many Americans regarding Mr. Reagan.
(many Americans who didn't have "stars" in their eyes, at least...)
Alas, with Reagan's passing...
that question may never be answered!
And finally, Americans weep over the death of
the man responsible for one of the worst
Presidential scandals in American history...
(a scandal far worse than Richard Nixon's WATERGATE mess)
...the grotesque debacle known as ...
THE IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR!
Just to refresh your memory ...
or for our younger readers ...
to provide a brief background ...
"Honey, I Forgot To Duck" Presents ...
The Basic Facts of Iran/Contra
The Iran/Contra affair concerned two secret Reagan Administration policies whose operations were coordinated by National Security Council staff. The Iran operation involved efforts in 1985 and 1986 to obtain the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East through the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran, despite an embargo on such sales. The contra operations from 1984 through most of 1986 involved the secret governmental support of contra military and paramilitary activities in Nicaragua, despite congressional prohibition of this support.
The Iran and contra operations were merged when funds generated from the sale of weapons to Iran were diverted to support the contra effort in Nicaragua. Although this "diversion" may be the most dramatic aspect of Iran/contra, it is important to emphasize that both the Iran and contra operations, separately, violated United States policy and law.
The ignorance of the "diversion" asserted by President Reagan and his Cabinet officers on the National Security Council in no way absolves them of responsibility for the underlying Iran and contra operations.
The secrecy concerning the Iran and contra activities was finally pierced by events that took place thousands of miles apart in the fall of 1986. The first occurred on October 5, 1986, when Nicaraguan government soldiers shot down an American cargo plane that was carrying military supplies to contra forces; the one surviving crew member, American Eugene Hasenfus, was taken into captivity and stated that he was employed by the CIA. A month after the Hasenfus shootdown, President Reagan's secret sale of U.S. arms to Iran was reported by a Lebanese publication on November 3. The joining of these two operations was made public on November 25, 1986, when Attorney General Meese announced that Justice Department officials had discovered that some of the proceeds from the Iran arms sales had been diverted to the contras.
When these operations ended, the exposure of the Iran/contra affair generated a new round of illegality. Beginning with the testimony of Elliott Abrams and others in October 1986 and continuing through the public testimony of Caspar W. Weinberger on the last day of the congressional hearings in the summer of 1987, senior Reagan Administration officials engaged in a concerted effort to deceive Congress and the public about their knowledge of and support for the operations.
Independent Counsel has concluded that the President's most senior advisers and the Cabinet members on the National Security Council participated in the strategy to make National Security staff members McFarlane, Poindexter and North the scapegoats whose sacrifice would protect the Reagan Administration in its final two years. In an important sense, this strategy succeeded. Independent Counsel discovered much of the best evidence of the cover-up in the final year of active investigation, too late for most prosecutions.
Prosecutions
In the course of Independent Counsel's investigation, 14 persons were charged with criminal violations. There were two broad classes of crimes charged: Operational crimes, which largely concerned the illegal use of funds generated in the course of the operations, and "cover-up" crimes, which largely concerned false statements and obstructions after the revelation of the operations.
Independent Counsel did not charge violations of the Arms Export Control Act or Boland Amendment. Although apparent violations of these statutes provided the impetus for the cover-up, they are not criminal statutes and do not contain any enforcement provisions.
ALL of the individuals charged were convicted, except for one CIA official whose case was dismissed on national security grounds and two officials who received unprecedented pre-trial pardons by President Bush following his electoral defeat in 1992. Two of the convictions were reversed on appeal on constitutional grounds that in no way cast doubt on the factual guilt of the men convicted. The individuals charged and the disposition of their cases are:
(1) Robert C. McFarlane: pleaded guilty to four counts of withholding information from Congress
(2) Oliver L. North: convicted of altering and destroying documents, accepting an illegal gratuity, and aiding and abetting in the obstruction of Congress; conviction reversed on appeal
(3) John M. Poindexter: convicted of conspiracy, false statements, destruction and removal of records, and obstruction of Congress; conviction reversed on appeal
(4) Richard V. Secord: pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress
(5) Albert Hakim: pleaded guilty to supplementing the salary of North
(6) Thomas G. Clines: convicted of four counts of tax-related offenses for failing to report income from the operations
(7) Carl R. Channell: pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States
(8) Richard R. Miller: pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States
(9) Clair E. George: convicted of false statements and perjury before Congress
(10) Duane R. Clarridge: indicted on seven counts of perjury and false statements; pardoned before trial by President Bush
(11) Alan D. Fiers, Jr.: pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress
(12) Joseph F. Fernandez: indicted on four counts of obstruction and false statements; case dismissed when Attorney General Richard L. Thornburgh refused to declassify information needed for his defense
(13) Elliott Abrams: pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress
(14) Caspar W. Weinberger: charged with four counts of false statements and perjury; pardoned before trial by President Bush
At the time President Bush pardoned Weinberger and Clarridge, he also pardoned George, Fiers, Abrams, and McFarlane.
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You may be asking yourself,
"Why didn't the Iran-Contra Affair
bring down President Ronald Reagan
in the same way the Watergate scandal
brought down President Richard Nixon?"
Why?, indeed!
Many historians feel Americans just did not
have the stomach for another scandal
so soon on the heels of Watergate ...
and simply chose to look the other way.
* * * * *
Others credited Reagan with slippery attributes!
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The Teflon President
Ronald Reagan was famous for not understanding how government works and for not
particularly caring about it. His job was to read speeches off the Teleprompter,
shake hands with foreign dignitaries, pose for pictures, and maybe go out and
visit a flag factory or a steel mill every once in a while. Otherwise he was
busy sleeping in, eating jellybeans, and watching television.
Even so, Reagan got deferential treatment from the press, so the news
coverage almost always cast him in the best possible light. He was extremely
comfortable in front of the cameras, as you would expect -- after all, he had
been a movie star prior to becoming a politician. And he could be disarmingly
affable. He often shared jokes and anecdotes and brilliantly-scripted one-liners
that sounded spontaneous. But none of that explains why the journalists decided
to take it easy on him.
Perhaps the reason Reagan got a free ride in the media stemmed from his
fortuitously-timed assassination attempt quite early in his presidency.
 "HONEY, I FORGOT TO DUCK!"
The American people immediately rallied around
their wounded leader. Reagan's popularity ratings suddenly went through the
roof, inflated by public sympathy. The nation's news editors and publishers
chose to play along, rather than risk appearing cold and heartless. This
deference persisted throughout his Presidency. So when Reagan would say
something phenomenally stupid during a press conference, most
news outlets just let it go. Even when he was quite obviously lying, he never really got called on it.
Reagan received the nickname
"The Teflon President" thanks to this phenomenon.
|
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When The Moon Is In The Seventh House
The tale of the Reagan astrologer is one of the weirdest scandals ever to rock any White House.
On the one hand, it's a silly and amusing comedy of errors; on the other, it's a profoundly
disturbing secret abuse of the nation's executive office. It is perhaps the only instance of
paranormal forces having an undeniably real impact on the course of U.S. history.
Towards the end of Ronald Reagan's second term, sordid unpleasantries were finally starting
to stick to the Teflon President. In May 1988, the crushing liabilities of Iran-Contra, the
bloated national debt and Reagan's faltering mental acuity were joined by a new revelation:
that for the previous seven years of his administration, the president's every important action
had been orchestrated by Nancy Reagan's astrologer, Joan Quigley.
This disclosure stunned the nation, with good reason. It's disturbing enough that a president
could be the puppet of an anonymous, unelected individual, hidden away from the American public.
Compounding the travesty, the source of this clandestine influence was nothing more substantial
than the vicissitudes of Ronnie's horoscope. What a sad and barbaric state of affairs, to have
our nation guided for the better part of a decade by the empty divinations of the Zodiac.
 Mrs. Reagan's dependence on the occult
went back at least as far as her husband's governorship, when she had depended
on the advice of the famous Jeane Dixon. Subsequently she had lost
confidence in Dixon's powers. But the First Lady seemed to have absolute
faith in the clairvoyant talents of Joan Quigley.
For seven years, these women pulled off the dizzyingly impossible task of keeping a secret in
the single most monitored and media-scrutinized place on earth.
White House aide Michael Deaver
knew about the astrologer and carried out her instructions, as did chief of staff Donald Regan
later on. And Reagan himself knew about Quigley's influence.
Other than those few people, no one had any idea what what going on until Don Regan spilled
the beans in his 1988 memoirs, For the Record. If not for Regan's bitter expulsion from the Reagan administration, orchestrated
by the First Lady herself, the entire secret of Nancy's stargazing "Friend" might still be
intact today.
Following Regan's expose, Quigley and Mrs. Reagan have each spoken and written at length about
their covert transactions. Their stories contradict each other on several key points. Sorting
out the truth here is a bit like charting the interplay of celestial forces in the distant sky,
an imprecise and dubious "science" at best. Instead of examining the respective claims of the
former First Lady and the former First Astrologer, let's round up the handful of facts that
have been established about this horoscope horror.
Quigley was a longtime consultant to Nancy Reagan, the two having been introduced by TV's
Merv Griffin sometime in the '70s. Quigley contributed astrological advice during Ron's 1976
bid for the Republican nomination, although she was not heavily involved with the Reagans until
the 1980 campaign. Once they made it to the White House, Nancy's association with Quigley
increased dramatically -- as did Quigley's control over Mr. Reagan's day-to-day routine.
During the campaign Quigley volunteered her services, but after the inauguration she began
charging a sizable fee, somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000 per month.
  
What exactly did Quigley do for this kind of money? In short, she devised laboriously
detailed charts indicating which dates and times were good for the president and which
were bad, according to his horoscope. Certain times were deemed ideal for action and
supposedly ensured success; others were unsuitable and invited disaster. Unlike the daily
generalities offered by newspaper horoscopes, Quigley's readings were calibrated down to
the exact hour and minute.
In the course of their regular telephone sessions, Nancy would list her husband's upcoming
itinerary, and the San Francisco-based astrologer would calculate the proper timing each
significant event required to achieve optimum harmony with planetary influences. Nancy then
passed along these scheduling requirements to the White House staff, with the absolute
demand that they be carried out. For the most part, the instructions were followed. Don
Regan summed up his strange duty in this passage from his memoirs:
 "Although I had never met this seer --
Mrs. Reagan passed along
her prognostications to me after conferring with her on the telephone -- she had
become such a factor in my work, and in the highest affairs of the nation, that
at one point I kept a color-coded calendar on my desk (numerals highlighted in
green ink for "good" days,
red for "bad" days,
yellow for "iffy" days) as an aid to
remembering when it was propitious to move the president of the United States
from one place to another, or schedule him to speak in public, or commence
negotiations with a foreign power.
According to a list provided by Mrs.
Reagan to scheduling aide Bill Henkel, Quigley had made the following
prohibitions based on her reading of the President's horoscope:
Late Dec thru
March bad
Jan 16 - 23 very bad
Jan
20 nothing outside WH--possible attempt
Feb 20 -
26 be careful
March 7 - 14 bad
period
March 10 - 14 no outside activity!
March
16 very bad
March 21 no
March
27 no
March 12 - 19 no trips
exposure
March 19 - 25 no public exposure
April
3 careful
April 11 careful
April
17 careful
April 21 - 28 stay
home
Obviously this list of dangerous or
forbidden dates left very little latitude for scheduling."
The frustration of dealing with a
situation in which the schedule of the President of the United States was
determined by occult prognostications was very great--far greater than any other
I had known in nearly forty-five years of working life."--Donald Regan,
For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington
Thus, Quigley had full control over the appointment book of the most powerful man in the
free world. Or, as Quigley would prefer to put it, the astrological forces of the cosmos did.
She was responsible for deciding when to make announcements, when to arrange summits,
when to schedule the departures and arrivals of Air Force One.
By simply scheduling events, she made countless impacts on the Reagan presidency.
In giving arbitrary astrological requirements priority over meaningful considerations,
the White House could have seriously imperiled the president many times over.
His personal safety, which Quigley professed to be ensuring, could have been compromised
whenever security preparations were altered to accommodate her schedule. And then there's
the question of timing the president's actions for maximum political effectiveness.
As Don Regan put it, that particular executive power went out the window:
"The president's schedule is the single most potent tool in the White House, because it
determines what the most powerful man in the world is going to do and when he is going to
do it. By humoring Mrs. Reagan we gave her this tool -- or more accurate, gave it to an
unknown woman in San Francisco who believed the Zodiac controls events and human behavior
and that she could read the secrets of the future in the movements of the planets."
Reagan was himself a superstitious man. He always carried a lucky charm in
his pocket. He knocked on wood, avoided walking under ladders, and made a habit
of tossing salt over his left shoulder before each meal. So it shouldn't be
surprising that the astrology stuff would appeal to him. Throughout the 1950s,
Ron and Nancy had sought out the services of Carroll Righter, astrologer to the
stars. When Reagan won California's governor seat, he scheduled his inauguration
for 12:10 A.M., on Righter's insistence.
 For fundamentalist preachers like Pat
Robertson and Jerry Falwell who promoted the myth of Reagan as a
standard-bearer of Christian righteousness, the astrology matter should have
been of particular concern. Astrology is a branch of the occult and is
inimical to Christianity. However, if the fundamentalist leaders were
concerned or embarrassed by the astrology revelations, they didn't seem to show
it.
For those who had already sized up
Ronald Reagan for the flake that he was, the disclosure of astrology in the
White House came as no big surprise. It was consistent with the goofy
statements and eccentric policy decisions that Reagan had made throughout his
presidency.
 "I'd heard my parents
read their horoscopes aloud at the breakfast table, but that seemed pretty
innocuous to me. Occasionally, I read mine, too -- usually so I can do the
exact opposite of what it says. But my parents have done what the stars
suggested -- actually altered schedules, changed travel plans, stayed home, cancelled
appearances."
--Patti Davis, Ron & Nancy's daughter,
The Way I See It
|
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THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR
Ronald Reagan was, in fact, known as "The Great Communicator"... (as long as he read from a script)
After Reagan made several misstatements
and gaffes early in his presidency, White House aide David Gergen said in
Reagan's defense, "The man has a reputation as a great communicator."
However, there was something that Gergen didn't say about Reagan: without
a script to read from, Reagan was often lost. Without a script, Reagan
would frequently make erroneous and outlandish comments.
One of Reagan's aides would later
remark:
"You have to treat him [Reagan] as if
you were the director and he was the actor, and you tell him what to say and
what not to say, and only then does he say the right thing."
--"The Mind of the President," The New York
Times Magazine, October 6, 1985
Yet it was not so easy for Reagan's aides
to script him for press conferences where unforeseen questions lurked.
This is one reason that Reagan limited his meetings with the press.
Reagan himself was aware that he was inept
at handling reporters. On several occasions, he allowed his press
secretary, Larry Speakes to intervene when he became confused, or was confronted
with a difficult question:
'My guardian says I can't
talk.''
--President Reagan
explaining that he can't answer a reporter's question after his press secretary,
Larry Speakes steps forward and orders the lights turned off, July 10,1984
"They turned out the lights. That
tells me I can't talk anymore."
--President Reagan explaining that he is not allowed to answer
any more questions, June 19, 1985
Not only did Larry Speakes worry that an
unprepared Reagan would put his foot in his mouth, so did Reagan's wife
Nancy, who would often feed him his next line in a ventriloquist-like mumble. At a 1983 press conference, when Reagan began to stumble, Nancy
burst on stage carrying a birthday cake. She successfully turned a news
event into a party where reporters stopped asking questions and sang "Happy
Birthday" to Reagan.
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Speaking of "The Great Communicator"
we have saved the best for last!
Ronald Reagan Speaks
(along with a few of his friends!)
Take a look at these delicious tidbits about...
and tidbits from the mouth of...
That Myth of Mythical Proportions...
Ronald Wilson Reagan
|
Let Me Say This About Reagan ...
 "This President is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if he were a child.... It is major news when he honors a political or economic discussion with a germane remark and not an anecdote about his Hollywood days."
--Columnist Richard Cohen
 "What planet is he living on?"
--President Mitterand of France poses this question about Reagan to Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau.
 "He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts."
--David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist
 "an amiable dunce"
--Clark Clifford (former Defense Secretary)
 "Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
"...like reinventing the wheel."
--Larry Speakes (Reagan's former press secretary) describing what it was like preparing the President for a press conference, Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House
 "The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan's ears is a challenging one for his aides."
--Columnist David Broder
"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless"
--Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan), talking about her father in her book, The Way I See It
"This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor."
--Mark Green, Reagan's Reign of Error
 "President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."
--former president Jimmy Carter, March 6, 1984
"His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point...he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year."
--Simon Hoggart, in The Observer (London), 1986
|
"Let Me Say This ..."
--Ronald Reagan, The Great Communicator
 "A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?"
--Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the Sacramento Bee, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park, March 3, 1966
"I don't believe a tree is a tree and if you've seen one you've seen them all."
--Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, September 14, 1966
 "All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
--Ronald Reagan (Republican candidate for president), quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980. (In reality, the average nuclear reactor generates 30 tons of radioactive waste per year.)
"I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time magazine, October 20, 1980. (According to scientists, Mount St. Helens emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day at its peak activity, compared with 81,000 tons per day produced by cars.)
"Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1980. (According to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund, industrial sources are responsible for at least 65 percent and possibly as much as 90 percent of the oxides of nitrogen in the U.S.)
 "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards for man-made sources."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Sierra, September 10, 1980
 "I've said it before and I'll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Detroit Free Press, March 23, 1980. (According to the USGS, the Saudi reserves of 165.5 billion barrels are 17 times the proven reserves--9.2 billion barrels--in Alaska.)
"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
--Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980
 "Trains are not any more energy efficient than the average automobile, with both getting about 48 passenger miles to the gallon."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1980. (The U.S. Department of Transportation calculates that a 14-car train traveling at 80 miles per hour gets 400 passenger miles to the gallon. A 1980 auto carrying an average of 2.2 people gets 42.6 passenger miles to the gallon.)
"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas."
--Ronald Reagan (candidate for Governor of California), interviewed in the Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965
"I have a feeling that we are doing better in the war [in Vietnam] than the people have been told."
--Ronald Reagan, in the Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1967
 "...the moral equal of our Founding Fathers."
--President Reagan, describing the Nicaraguan contras, March 1, 1985
"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976
"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself."
--President Reagan, in an interview with foreign journalists, April 19, 1985. ("In costume" is more like it. Reagan spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood.)
 "What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice."
--President Reagan, defending himself against charges of callousness on Good Morning America, January 31, 1984
"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965
"I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966
"If there has to be a bloodbath then let's get it over with."
--Ronald Reagan (Governor of California), quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, 1969. (Reagan reveals how he intends to deal with student protesters at the University of California, Berkeley.)
"Today a newcomer to the state is automatically eligible for our many aid programs the moment he crosses the border."
--Ronald Reagan, in a speech announcing his candidacy for Governor, January 3, 1966. (In fact, immigrants to California had to wait five years before becoming eligible for benefits. Reagan acknowledged his error, but nine months later said exactly the same thing.)
"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
--Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients, the majority of which are children.)
 "Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders."
--California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28, 1966
"We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
--Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964
"But I also happen to be someone who believes in tithing--the giving of a tenth [to charity]."
--Ronald Reagan, from The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, February 8, 1982. (He may believe in tithing, but he doesn't practice it. Reagan's total charitable giving of $5,965 did not approach 10% of total income. It was more like 1.4%.)
"[Not] until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this."
--President Reagan revealing a disturbing view about the "coming of Armageddon," December 6, 1983
"History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness."
--Ronald Reagan, in Time, April 14, 1980. (History shows no such thing. Income tax rates in Europe have traditionally been far higher than U.S. rates, while European crime rates have been much lower.)
"Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything."
--Ronald Reagan, in Newsweek, April 21, 1980. (Wrong again.)
Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close."
--Ronald Reagan to aide Stuart Spencer, 1966
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More FIBS, LIES and WHOPPERS from
RONALD WILSON REAGAN
A President Who Never Chopped Down The Cherry Tree
(Or Did He?!?)
 Guns of Brixton.
"In England, if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn't use it, he was tried for first-degree murder and hung if he was found guilty," Ronald Reagan claimed in April 1982. When informed that the story was "just not true," White House spokesman Larry Speakes said, "Well, it's a good story, though. It made the point, didn't it?" Reagan repeated the story again on March 21, 1986 during an interview with The New York Times.
The Liberator.
In November 1983, Reagan told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that he had served as a photographer in a U.S. Army unit assigned to film Nazi death camps. He repeated the story to Simon Wiesenthal the following February. Reagan never visited or filmed a concentration camp; he spent World War II in Hollywood, making training films with the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps.
Arms for Hostages.
"We did not--repeat, did not--trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we," Reagan proclaimed in November 1986. Four months later, on March 4, 1987, Reagan admitted in a televised national address, "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
Welfare Queens.
Over a period of about five years, Reagan told the story of the "Chicago welfare queen" who had 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and collected benefits for "four nonexisting deceased husbands," bilking the government out of "over $150,000." The real welfare recipient to whom Reagan referred was actually convicted for using two different aliases to collect $8,000. Reagan continued to use his version of the story even after the press pointed out the actual facts of the case to him.
Balance the Budget And Increase Defense Spending?
The Reagan administration introduced the 1981 Economic Recovery Act by claiming that it would cut taxes by 30 percent, increase defense spending by three-quarters of a trillion dollars, and achieve a balanced budget within three years. Budget director David Stockman admitted in November of 1981 that, "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers" and that supply-side economics "was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate."
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Dead at the age of 93...
RONALD WILSON REAGAN
WHAT A SHAME!
AS WE END OUR SOMBER FILE-BY...
PERHAPS A BIT SADDENED... POSSIBLY A BIT SICKENED...
WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR VISITING!
OH, AND DON'T FORGET TO DUCK ON YOUR WAY OUT!
BETTER YET ...
MAY WE OFFER YOU
TICKETS TO THE EXHIBIT NEXT DOOR?
PREPARE TO ENTER A BIZARRE WORLD...
WHERE RIGHT IS WRONG... AND LEFT IS RIGHT!
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the first Marlboro Man...er...Chesterfield Man ...