He says he doesn’t know not that they wouldn’t. Of course he doesn’t know. He didn’t deal with anyone else.
I’ve got no doubt that is what Gorby said at this point. What exactly did you think he was gonna say in response to “Former Pres. Reagan died, do you have any words?” “eh, Ronnie was ok, but ya know, we were going down anyhow”. It was a gracious statement on his part. THere’s no way of knowing that is his real sentiment.
Now THAT was funny.
Oh, that’s simple. One that trashes Reagan. Doesn’t matter who it’s from.
You may have noticed that on the board devoted to ‘fighting ignorance’, zillions of hard cites from world figures including everyone from Ted Kennedy to Mikhail Gorbachev, all giving Reagan substantial credit for ending the cold war, get ignored. In the meantime, the supposed fighters of ignorance are relying on conjecture, conspiracy, and cites from lefty publications with an axe to grind.
The meltdown of the SDMB is almost complete. Hopefully it will regain a little sanity after the election is over.
I wouldn’t hold your breath, Sam Stone. Remember when Clinton took office? The howls from the far right were pretty loud. As was the crowing from the left. Politics have been pretty divisive for some time. While I hate to asign all the blame to either side, It does seem to extend from the time that Reagan took office. The left hated him so much (as opposed to simply hating the things Nixon did) that they are still pissed at him. And since this is the pit:
Fuck all you bastards. You could not give the grieving family of a former President of the United States one mother fucking day! You just had to stick your smelly armpits you call ideas into what could have been a solumn ocasion and stink it all up. Fuck you all and the horse you rode in on! No, scratch that. Fuck you all with the horse you rode in on! The horse, mind you, not just his genitals!
That did not feel as good as I had hoped. Oh well. 
I do not think you made much of an effort to catch what I was trying to say. To put it more directly, the Dope is about cutting through the bullshit, left and right. Democratic Underground like any political board, will spew hagiography, a well known form of bullshit, where appropriate to achieve their political ends. Talking about what a fine fellow Reagan was is an excellent way to point out what a dipshit Dubya is by contrast, thus parting more swing voters from the Repub party. Dopers won’t do that because if they really don’t think Reagan was a fine fellow and they say he is, they’re bullshitting, and they’re less prone to do that.
What else was he going to say? Nothing! No one elicited this statement from him. It wasn’t an interview. He wrote this without any prompting, of his own accord. If he didn’t honestly feel this way he didn’t have to write anything. I’d say it’s about as honest a show of his sentiment as you’re going to find.
He was talking about Reagan’s later years, when he began to abandon his hard line rhetoric to actually try and WORK with Gorbachev.
Sam, I just want to ask you-was Bary Goldwater a “fringe leftist?”
:dubious:
(For all his crap about, “liberal this, liberal that”, he only spreads the idea that conservatives are whiners who can’t take criticism)
again - what was he going to say? it was a gracious statement. Christ - look at some of the sentiments expressed (openly in the political areana) when Nixon died. and he died in disgrace. take a look at what (openly) US officials said of Khruschef when he died - any of them take pot shots? or was it of the ilk “he was a great stateman”
Of course Guin we know that the two never met till 1985 shortly after Gorbachev became leader.
Reeder, the only thing you haven’t accused Reagan of is zapping a 9 year old girl with a tazar. I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts you’re working on it.
The same old haters in this thread are spewing hatred while calling for tolerance and criticizing leadership but never offering any.
Just out of curiosity, is there a difference between the two following statements?
“I don’t know if XJETGIRLX is a chihuahua.”
“I know that XJETGIRLX is a chihuahua.”
It’s sort of like the difference between these statements:
“I know that Saddam Hussein possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction”
and
“I don’t know that Saddam Hussein possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction”
It’s a subtle shift in emphasis. You may need to read the sentences several times to see the difference.
I’m sure Nancy and the kids were devastated, reading these threads…
No, of course not. But it is still in bad taste. One freaking day. Sheesh.
Now boys and girls, we move on in our description of logical fallacies to the “false dichotomy” A textbook illustration of this rather insidious little wheeze can be found right here:
Sam, I know you’re a good guy. That much I know to be true.
Just accept a little unsolicited advice from a guy who’s already been through a period of “messagboard exasperation inconsolum” - and it’s this… it seems to me you’ve got two choices… (1) continue to fight the good fight and throw away the complaints about SDMB bias or (2) take a sojourn from the SDMB for a little while and chill.
Option (3) is that you continue to complain about all the lefties and start to sound like a broken record, thereby giving off the air of someone who’s an incessant whiner. I would politely suggest that you’re a better man than Option (3).
Would that be a trichotomy?
Not saying it’s a false one…
Well, see, those statements aren’t exactly analagous, either. He didn’t just say 'I don’t know _______." He put in a qualifier. He said “I don’t know that ______ would have happened if not for _______.”
My point was, first and foremost - he didn’t have to say anything at all. He gains nothing politically by doing Pres. Reagan and favors post mortem. He doesn’t win votes, or popularity, or anything at all really. So he has no motive to give false flattery.
Second, that sentence in particular and the way he phrased it says he understands that there are those who doubt Pres. Reagan himself had much to do with the way things went down. He’s not outright confirming it, but he’s saying that he thinks that may have been a big factor in it.
So, play semantics all you want, I just don’t think the guy would have brought it up if he didn’t think the world needed to know that Ronnie may have just been more influential and well thought of, even by Mr. Gorbachev than most of you seem to believe.
Oh. come on. It was the normal polite bullshit that he was expected to spew.
And what he was actually talking about had nothing to do with Regan fighting the cold war but with Reagan’s willingness to ass kiss Gorbachev and suck up to the Russians. Gorbachev is saying that a President with a spine may not have allowed Gorby to deescalate the cold war the way that he did.
That’s all any of us are doing.