[quote]nephorm wrote:
If there were an obesity “epidemic” sweeping through, say, the US… [/quote]
IF?
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
I am not a scholar on Reagan, and I won’t claim to be. I don’t particularly like him, as I am a left leaning Democrat, and I do think he got way too much credit for bringing down Communism. When it comes to bringing a Communist government (or any government) down, it is the people that do it. Reagan may have made them spend ridiculous amounts of money on it, and I don’t agree with that either. What it comes down to is that he tripled the debt, pissed on the lower classes (in my opinion now, calm down now), and took credit for something that had been the work of generations of men. The Soviet Union would have fallen wether Reagan was President or ALF was president; Communism doesn’t work. Period.
Secondly to the man that said that Lincoln was not the best president (or one of the best), you need your head examined. I am no scholar on Reagan, but I am one on the Civil War. To say that all Lincoln did was keep the British out of the war is a statement of pure idiocy and absolute ignorance. If you want to debate that, give me your best shot. I hate to say it, but don’t belittle the man because your from Texas and you fellas lost. [/quote]
You know almost nothing about Reagan, and yet you claim he did almost nothing. There is no one single public person in the 20th Century who spent more of their life fighting communism. He was fighting it back in the 50’s. As for his spending habits as a president. Look at what he was handed. The debt was going to go up from carter anyway.
Me being from Texas has nothing to do with my slant on the war.
If the war was about the slaves, then explain to me why it took Lincoln two years to declare they were free oh wise Lincoln Scholar. You will be hard pressed to find any true historian that believes Lincoln was a sympathiser with the slaves. It was a political move. A move that I think was a great one, but he is no Johnathan Edwards. So before you saint him recognize why he did it.
[quote]WMD wrote:
RJ, do you have a tape of the returns you watch over and over again? YOu bring it up on nearly every thread, which is why I ask.
Is there really any practical difference between the Dems and Republicans any more?
Forget the lesser evil, vote for Cthulu![/quote]
I only bring it up when the ABB crowd starts their inane whining and crying about how the election was stolen, or how Bush is the dumbest President ever, or any of the other myriad of bullshit whines and moans that the ABB crowd comes out with.
I am a Republican. I have been since 1982. A Republican gov’t has been a long time in coming, and I dearly love to remind the ABBesrs that my side has been winning since 1994, and that they are the minority.
[quote]WMD wrote:
haney wrote:
Your right that ending the cold war thing had nothing to do with Reagan.
Not that the cold war was essentially unsustainable or anything. Nope it was all about Reagan. Where’s my Ronald Reagan superhero doll?[/quote]
I am sure you remember Senate and Congress pushing for us to dismantle weapons, or Europe wanting us to make pacts to dismantle. If we had started a dismantling of our weapons like all of Reagans opponents wanted us to do, do you think communism would of still fell?
Russia would have had just had to maintain. Which would certainly give them a chance to build capital for a later date. Oh but you knew that right?
So technically it was sustainable if Reagan did nothing. You guys should really try to remember your political climates from the era of when they were happening.
[quote]WMD wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
harris447 wrote:AIDs Crisis? – Who in the hell could stop anything like that? How do you stop homos from screwing each other in a San Francisco bath house? Crock
T-Nation’s collective intelligence just went down 50 or so points. Nice work.
[/quote]
Did I say something untrue? How does a president stop dangerous behaviour like perverts screwing each and passing around a killer disease? And, get your ‘politically-correct’ panties out of a knot: I call 'em like I see 'em.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Secondly to the man that said that Lincoln was not the best president (or one of the best), you need your head examined. I am no scholar on Reagan, but I am one on the Civil War. To say that all Lincoln did was keep the British out of the war is a statement of pure idiocy and absolute ignorance. If you want to debate that, give me your best shot. I hate to say it, but don’t belittle the man because your from Texas and you fellas lost. [/quote]
Here is one of my best shots quotes from Lincoln himself
http://www.cato.org/dailys/06-01-02.html
Lincoln, oddly enough, apparently shared some of these views. In his 1860 inaugural address, he said: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” Two years later, President Lincoln wrote: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union (Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862).” And in 1858 Lincoln had written: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
Notice where is inaguration speech talks about not interferring with slavery.
Notice this line two years later
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union (Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862).”
“I do it to save you the Union” Sounds like a political move to me.
Bring it on Lincoln Scholar I would love to see you explain away his own words on not wanting to free the slaves.
Oh right I did this based on “pure idiocy and absolute ignorance”
I am sure a Lincoln Scholar like yourself knew about this letter though.
Haney, you are right about the fact that the president cannot hope to change the sexual behavior of gay men and thus the transmission of HIV/AIDS.
All he can do is fund research. Reagan did that. Bush is spending much more on AIDS than any other politician around the world ever has.
You are also correct that Reagan stood firm against the Communists. The American and European left were speaking about unilateral disarmarment.
The Communists certainly would not have collapsed if the left had their way. The left wanted to join the commies, not beat them.
You are incorrect about Lincoln and the Civil War. Slavery was at the cornerstone of the main issues of the war, which were states rights (to own slaves), taxes and tarriffs (which were set to favor the Norths economy, not the Souths slave based economy) and control of the West. Whether the Western Territories were to allow slavery was a key point of contention.
When it became apparant that slavery was on its way out (it was assumed at the time that it would be eliminated in 20 to 40 years) the South seceded.
Lincoln’s goal was to reunite the country. He would have dearly loved to avoid the Civil War and would have happily let the South keep their slaves for a while. The whole system of slavery was doomed. The Civil War was certainly about slavery. This was a huge rallying cry for the North. Freeing the slaves was the reason many Northerners fought. In the South they were not told they were fighting to keep slaves because they would not have had nearly as many men join up.
Haney, you beat me to it with Lincoln’s prime motivation was to save the Union.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Haney, you are right about the fact that the president cannot hope to change the sexual behavior of gay men and thus the transmission of HIV/AIDS.
All he can do is fund research. Reagan did that. Bush is spending much more on AIDS than any other politician around the world ever has.
You are also correct that Reagan stood firm against the Communists. The American and European left were speaking about unilateral disarmarment.
The Communists certainly would not have collapsed if the left had their way. The left wanted to join the commies, not beat them.
You are incorrect about Lincoln and the Civil War. Slavery was at the cornerstone of the main issues of the war, which were states rights (to own slaves), taxes and tarriffs (which were set to favor the Norths economy, not the Souths slave based economy) and control of the West. Whether the Western Territories were to allow slavery was a key point of contention.
When it became apparant that slavery was on its way out (it was assumed at the time that it would be eliminated in 20 to 40 years) the South seceded.
Lincoln’s goal was to reunite the country. He would have dearly loved to avoid the Civil War and would have happily let the South keep their slaves for a while. The whole system of slavery was doomed. The Civil War was certainly about slavery. This was a huge rallying cry for the North. Freeing the slaves was the reason many Northerners fought. In the South they were not told they were fighting to keep slaves because they would not have had nearly as many men join up.[/quote]
Actually I didn’t say anything about aids, or sexual oreintation. I think that was someone else.
As for freeing the slaves. Lincoln only freed the slaves in the South, not the North. So technically it was not really about slavery, it became about slavery, but that was more of an extra, not the important part.
"In the end, however, no European nation offered mediation nor extended recognition of the Confederacy. Among the reasons undermining active European intervention were several principal considerations. Economically, there were developments that shifted trade relations to emphasize the North’s economic ties with Europe. To begin with, huge cotton exports in 1857-1860 had enabled English manufactures to stockpile inventories that carried them through much of the war. Additionally, new sources of cotton in Egypt and India replaced the southern supply after 1862. Furthermore, the Union became a major consumer of British iron, ships, armaments, and woolen uniforms and blankets, which absorbed the decline in the U.S. market for English cotton textiles. At the same time, crop failures in Western Europe in 1861 and 1862 increased European dependence on American grain and flour, making King Corn as powerful as King Cotton.
Socially, the open hostility of England’s working class to the Confederacy as a nation of aristocrats and slavemasters countered the support for the Confederacy by English members of the upper class. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation served to transform British antislavery sentiment into strong political opposition to the Confederacy. On the diplomatic front, there was a delicate balancing act between France and England, as neither side wanted to be the first to recognize Confederate independence least the other use it to foment a new alliance with the Union.
All of these factors came to play in a series of diplomatic flourishes and sentiment shifts that often reflected the loss or victory of Union armies. But nothing was perhaps more consequential than the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation when combined with Lincoln’s determination either to win the war or else to die in trying. Once the war became a crusade to destroy slavery, and once the Union Army presented itself as an army of liberation?rather than just an army of national self-preservation, it was almost impossible for England to intervene on the side of the Confederacy. British public opinion had become strongly abolitionist and no government could have taken the other side."
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Haney, you beat me to it with Lincoln’s prime motivation was to save the Union.[/quote]
History is my strongest subject 
[quote]haney wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
I am not a scholar on Reagan, and I won’t claim to be. I don’t particularly like him, as I am a left leaning Democrat, and I do think he got way too much credit for bringing down Communism. When it comes to bringing a Communist government (or any government) down, it is the people that do it. Reagan may have made them spend ridiculous amounts of money on it, and I don’t agree with that either. What it comes down to is that he tripled the debt, pissed on the lower classes (in my opinion now, calm down now), and took credit for something that had been the work of generations of men. The Soviet Union would have fallen wether Reagan was President or ALF was president; Communism doesn’t work. Period.
Secondly to the man that said that Lincoln was not the best president (or one of the best), you need your head examined. I am no scholar on Reagan, but I am one on the Civil War. To say that all Lincoln did was keep the British out of the war is a statement of pure idiocy and absolute ignorance. If you want to debate that, give me your best shot. I hate to say it, but don’t belittle the man because your from Texas and you fellas lost.
You know almost nothing about Reagan, and yet you claim he did almost nothing. There is no one single public person in the 20th Century who spent more of their life fighting communism. He was fighting it back in the 50’s. As for his spending habits as a president. Look at what he was handed. The debt was going to go up from carter anyway.
Me being from Texas has nothing to do with my slant on the war.
If the war was about the slaves, then explain to me why it took Lincoln two years to declare they were free oh wise Lincoln Scholar. You will be hard pressed to find any true historian that believes Lincoln was a sympathiser with the slaves. It was a political move. A move that I think was a great one, but he is no Johnathan Edwards. So before you saint him recognize why he did it.[/quote]
Read my quote again. I said he did great things. Nowhere, anywhere, did I mention the causes of the war, whether or not I thought it was slavery, or whether I thought Lincoln sympathised with the slaves or not. I don’t quite know what you want me to say in reply to this ot your last post, which damns Lincoln all around except for this guy’s theories on him.
Might I also say that this is not a reputable source on anything about Lincoln; first, it is an internet site, secondly, it is very skewed (the motto is "Individual Liberty, Limited Government, Free Markets, and Peace. Sounds Republican)…I do not want to hijack this thread on Lincoln’s account, so I will start another one entitled “On Lincoln” in the politics section, and post a theory I think equal to your charges. Let me know what you think from there. This is an interesting discussion that I don’t want to see die out.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Read my quote again. I said he did great things. Nowhere, anywhere, did I mention the causes of the war, whether or not I thought it was slavery, or whether I thought Lincoln sympathised with the slaves or not. I don’t quite know what you want me to say in reply to this ot your last post, which damns Lincoln all around except for this guy’s theories on him.
Might I also say that this is not a reputable source on anything about Lincoln; first, it is an internet site, secondly, it is very skewed (the motto is "Individual Liberty, Limited Government, Free Markets, and Peace. Sounds Republican)…I do not want to hijack this thread on Lincoln’s account, so I will start another one entitled “On Lincoln” in the politics section, and post a theory I think equal to your charges. Let me know what you think from there. This is an interesting discussion that I don’t want to see die out. [/quote]
I also said his motivation for why he did something was based purely on a political move to which you said I was insane.
I also posted his quotes from letters he wrote. the site I got them from is not important, what is important is did he say them.
As for the site. He basically says lincoln was tyranical, but his act in the war was justified because it freed the slaves. It was an interesting read. Lincoln was republican, so I doubt that site is pro GOP or anti GOP.
His quotes are reputable. You can easily look up the reference that was left in the highlighted paragraph That is why I used it.
sure start a thread. Remember though it is about slavery, since I have never said he was not a great president, I only said what made him great was merely a political move, not a conviction.
[quote]haney wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Haney, you beat me to it with Lincoln’s prime motivation was to save the Union.
History is my strongest subject
[/quote]
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I apologize for the incorrect comment I just didn’t give you time to finish what you were saying.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
haney wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Haney, you beat me to it with Lincoln’s prime motivation was to save the Union.
History is my strongest subject
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I apologize for the incorrect comment I just didn’t give you time to finish what you were saying.[/quote]
Not a problem. I would have thrown a stone at you, but I realized I am guilty of doing that all the time.
I do understand this, and that is what I will argue. Also, in my opinion, the sources are very important. History books don’t list websites as sources, for the mere fact that they are very easily manipulated, and the quotes, though they were said, are taken out of historical context. I’m an English major, so I always lean towards books as opposed to websites. But I’m in progress right now, give me a half hour and I’ll have a reply.
And the Reagan deal gets to ugly to discuss… people vehemently defend and oppose him. Like I said, I simply don’t believe that he deserves all the credit he is given. I will concede that he had something to do with the Cold War ending, but I will never believe he deserves the enourmous admiration that he is given, the admiration which makes many people put him in the tier with the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Roosevelts.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
I do understand this, and that is what I will argue. Also, in my opinion, the sources are very important. History books don’t list websites as sources, for the mere fact that they are very easily manipulated, and the quotes, though they were said, are taken out of historical context. I’m an English major, so I always lean towards books as opposed to websites. But I’m in progress right now, give me a half hour and I’ll have a reply.
And the Reagan deal gets to ugly to discuss… people vehemently defend and oppose him. Like I said, I simply don’t believe that he deserves all the credit he is given. I will concede that he had something to do with the Cold War ending, but I will never believe he deserves the enourmous admiration that he is given, the admiration which makes many people put him in the tier with the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Roosevelts. [/quote]
That is fine. I could of looked up the quotes individually, but I didn’t think I should considering the sources were there, and your case for contention could still be made using them.
As for your greats. I would take a stance against FDR for reasons that have been discussed in a previous post. I would put Reagen up there as one of the greats for the 20th Century, and certainly the best in my short lifetime. Simply for his vision, and comittment to leadership of this country.
you would disagree.
I agree with FightinIrish on the reagan deal.I think his rep was way overblown,The economy was very bad when he was pres.I know a lot of people that lost their jobs and went broke.I guess if you like dems or repubs depends on what you do for a living.Most repubs i know in my area either have county or state jobs,police ,fire etc.and there was a big stink about the people with these jobs having money takin right out of their paychecks for the local repub. party.
Hey wasnt reagan the original flip flopper,I always heard he was a dem. when he was in the screen actors guild and later switched to repub. to further career moves.Maybe Lincoln wanted to free up that cheap labor to help all the business tycoons wanting to build their empire.And for the civil war historians isnt it true that 50-60 thousand blacks fought for the south in the civil war.
[quote]ron33 wrote:
I agree with FightinIrish on the reagan deal.I think his rep was way overblown,The economy was very bad when he was pres.I know a lot of people that lost their jobs and went broke.I guess if you like dems or repubs depends on what you do for a living.Most repubs i know in my area either have county or state jobs,police ,fire etc.and there was a big stink about the people with these jobs having money takin right out of their paychecks for the local repub. party.
Hey wasnt reagan the original flip flopper,I always heard he was a dem. when he was in the screen actors guild and later switched to repub. to further career moves.Maybe Lincoln wanted to free up that cheap labor to help all the business tycoons wanting to build their empire.And for the civil war historians isnt it true that 50-60 thousand blacks fought for the south in the civil war.[/quote]
No it isnt. Robert E. Lee always advocated the idea, but it was enver allowed. By the time it was going to be put into prcatice the SOuth had surrendered. On the Union side, nearly 500,000 blacks fought for their freedom.
[quote]ron33 wrote:
I agree with FightinIrish on the reagan deal.I think his rep was way overblown,The economy was very bad when he was pres.I know a lot of people that lost their jobs and went broke.I guess if you like dems or repubs depends on what you do for a living.Most repubs i know in my area either have county or state jobs,police ,fire etc.and there was a big stink about the people with these jobs having money takin right out of their paychecks for the local repub. party.[/quote]
The economy suffered for several reasons, many of them being inherited problems from his predecessor.
You don’t know much about Reagan if you think he was a flip flopper. He stuck to his guns more than most presidents. People forget about all the things that when down with lebanon, and the sorts. Or the Strike when he fired all of the air traffic controllers. He really stuck to his guns on alot of issues.
[quote]
Maybe Lincoln wanted to free up that cheap labor to help all the business tycoons wanting to build their empire.And for the civil war historians isnt it true that 50-60 thousand blacks fought for the south in the civil war.[/quote]
I am not quite sure on the number but they were on both sides. The confederate solidiers never saw war though.
[quote]WMD wrote:
nephorm wrote:
If there were an obesity “epidemic” sweeping through, say, the US…
IF?
[/quote]
Obviously you didn’t detect my subtle irony, there.