Need facts on Ronald Reagan

[George_Bonanza]

I posted on another board that Reagan made mistakes such as waging illegal wars in South America, wasting tax money on Star Wars, and rashly recognizing wannabe independent split-aways from the Soviet Union without making sure they'd respect the ethnic minorities in their borders, out of his intense hatred of communism. Then I got an incredulous "Where do you get your facts?!" response. I want to get cold hard facts on what made Reagan a supremely popular but deeply flawed president. Now I don't want hot rhetoric and personal biases, like "He was just a dumb actor." I want cold hard facts on why he is not all that he's cracked up to be.

[Kurt Remarque]

1. it's tough to sort through the reagan biographies....

...especially the horridly flattering recent junk which seeks to deify him. i actually liked the edmund morris "official" bio except for the excessive credit he gives reagan for the eventual end of the cold war. even with a spellbound media at the time, there were a number of books during the reagan presidency which were credible. check the library...

[Bombtrack]

2. End of cold war through force, cut taxes, big economic growth

and the fact that he was an optimistic, motivational orator. Those are the main reasons he's considered great by so many. His huge deficits, illegal clandesine actions, and deterioration of the lower income classes are ignored

[Octafish]

3. Visit the Catbird's seat for all things Reagan...

... and every scandalous thing Democratic and Republican. A sampler of Pruneface birds and turds...

Regarding the S&L looting:

EXCERPT...

(Charles) Keating is a man who has done favors for many powerful individuals including Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush. Steven Pizzo, author of INSIDE JOB, one of the best books on S&L looting, supplied Barbara Honegger, author of OCTOBER SURPRISE, a Defense Intelligence Agency telex indicating that the alleged OCTOBER SURPRISE airplane for William Casey's and Heinrich Rupp's Paris trip was arranged by Kenneth Qualls, formerly the chief pilot of Charlie Keating's AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CORPORATION. This and other high level CIA favors may suggest even more sinister reasons why the major features of the Keating story never made it to print. . . .

Savings and Loans were originally chartered to provide home mortgage loans. When Ronald Reagan deregulated the industry, high rollers were free to attempt more ambitious projects with the federally insured deposits. No one was more ambitious than Charlie Keating and no one lost more of the tax payer's money.

To date taxpayers have been assessed $500 billion for the S&L looting - $2 1/2 billion for Charlie's sins alone. After providing less than a dozen home loans, Keating set out to build THE PHOENICIAN, a $300 million luxury resort hotel financed 55% by his newly acquired S&L, LINCOLN SAVINGS, and 45% by the King and Queen of Kuwait.

November of 1989, six months after Keating's parent company AMERICAN CONTINENTAL finally hit the skids, the Feds took over the PHOENICIAN RESORT in a surprise 1:00 AM raid. At 4:00 AM Keating was summoning bellmen to a side entrance where 24 cartons of files were loaded into Keating's recreational vehicle. When asked about this by a member of the local press the Feds responded that they knew of this and Keating was allowed to take these files because "they were his personal correspondence --- like letters to his family." The federal investigation of Keating was totally compromised from beginning to end.

CONTINUED (with ALL the details and names to GOOGLE)...