Reagan's best speech: as a DEMOCRAT

[yurbud]

Run time: 04:13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJDhS4oUm0M   Posted on YouTube: July 21, 2007 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 01, 2008 By DU Member: yurbud Views on DU: 1864

 
I heard this on http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=521&Itemid=113">Thom Hartmann, and it's just too good. Maybe this should be the Democrats campaign commercial this fall.

highlights:

"This is Ronald Reagan speaking to you from Hollywood. You know me as a motion picture actor but tonight I'm just a citizen pretty concerned about the national election next month and more than a little impatient with those promises the Republicans made before they got control of Congress a couple years ago.

I remember listening to the radio on election night in 1946. Joseph Martin, the Republican Speaker of the House, said very solemnly, and I quote, "We Republicans intend to work for a real increase in income for everybody by encouraging more production and lower prices without impairing wages or working conditions", unquote. Remember that promise: a real increase in income for everybody. But what actually happened?

The profits of corporations have doubled, while workers' wages have increased by only one-quarter. In other words, profits have gone up four times as much as wages, and the small increase workers did receive was more than eaten up by rising prices, which have also bored into their savings. For example, here is an Associate Press Dispatch I read the other day about Smith L. Carpenter, a craftsman in Union Springs, New York. It seems that Mr. Carpenter retired some years ago thinking he had enough money saved up that he could live out his last years without having to worry. But he didn’t figure on this Republican inflation, which ate up all of his savings, and so he's gone back to work. The reason this is news, is Mr. Carpenter is 91 years old.

Now, take as a contrast the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which reported a net profit of $210 million after taxes for the first half of 1948; an increase of 70% in one year. In other words, high prices have not been caused by higher wages, but by bigger and bigger profits.

The Republican promises sounded pretty good in 1946, but what has happened since then, since the 80th Congress took over? Prices have climbed to the highest level in history, although the death of the OPA was supposed to bring prices down through "the natural process of free competition". Labor has been handcuffed with the vicious Taft-Hartley law. Social Security benefits have been snatched away from almost a million workers by the Gearhart bill. Fair employment practices, which had worked so well during war time, have been abandoned. Veterans' pleas for low cost homes have been ignored, and many people are still living in made-over chicken coops and garages.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=521&Itemid=113|FULL TEXT>

[annabanana]

1. It must have been AFTER that that he lost his mind.. . . .n/t

[Drunken Irishman]

2. It's pretty well known Reagan was a Democrat once.

He famously quipped that he didn't leave the Democratic Party, they left him. :eyes:

[yurbud]

3. after seeing this, it's pretty clear who left who

[Drunken Irishman]

6. Pretty much. Reagan was an FDR Democrat.

And the devoted his presidency to undoing all the work FDR did for this country.

I think Reagan changed parties just for political gain and not because of policy differences.

[Selatius]

9. I wonder when exactly he sold out FDR. I guess they named the right price for Reagan. n/t

[Drunken Irishman]

10. The 1950s.

Which is weird, because he went from supporting FDR not even 10 years prior, to endorsing Eisenhower in the 1952 election. Why? Because he liked small government. Well if you liked small government, how the hell could you ever support FDR?

[happydreams]

4. K&R! Excellent idea.

This is too much. :rofl:

Raygun was also a member of the Communist Party, but they kicked him out, or denied entry, I can't remember which, 'cause he was a dumb ass.
I've always wondered how history would have been different had Hitler finished art school, or Marx had gotten a pay raise from Horace Greely's paper when the former was its European correspondent, or Raygun had not been booted from the Communist Party. :crazy:

[happydreams]

5. Ronnie then went to work for GE, after making a fool of himself...

in Bedtime for Dubya (The monkey was the result of Poppy's visit to the zoo where he raped a chimpanzee, or so I heard).

[yurbud]

8. chimps might take offense at that LINK

Comparison to Bush Disgusts Chimps



by Milo Cornelius Science Newswire staff writer

December 13, 2006

(Science Newswire) DES MOINES -- Conservatives howl when anyone compares George W. Bush to Hitler, and the left rolls their eyes when the right compares Bush to Winston Churchill or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but no one has taken much offense when Bush is compared to a chimp—until now. Chimps who have been taught to communicate with humans have unanimously expressed anger and dismay at being compared with President Bush.




http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/12/comparison-to-bush-disgusts-chimps.html">FULL TEXT

[CGowen]

7. hey, he was an actor and he could be whatever he wanted to be n/t