How Reagan Wrecked The American Middle Class, And Came Out Smelling Like A Rose

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/02/09/how-reagan-wrecked-the-american-middle-class-and-came-out-smelling-like-a-rose/

“Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.” — Ronald Reagan

February 6th marked the would-be birthday of Ronald Reagan, the beloved Republican icon who passed away in 2004. He would have been 101 years old. The charismatic, two-term Republican president from 1981-1989 defined the modern conservative movement and became the benevolent face of a harsh philosophy. For those of you who either weren’t following politics or weren’t born yet, Reagan’s star rose as drugs, crime, and mass upheavals in the late 1960′s and 1970′s put liberalism in a bad light. When Reagan defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980, our country was demoralized by the Vietnam War, Watergate, rising oil prices, rampant inflation, and the never-ending hostage crisis in Iran. Never mind that Richard Nixon, a Republican president, caused the Watergate scandal, and that conservatives from both parties (the GOP actually had liberals and moderates back then) supported Vietnam and the foreign policy positions that pissed people off in the Middle East. Everyone was blaming liberals for our woes, and here’s this cheerful, grandfatherly guy telling us it’s “morning in America.” Yeah, Good f*cking morning.

Reagan honed his political positions as California’s governor from 1967-1975. During his 1966 campaign, he promised to “send the welfare bums back to work” and “clean up the mess in Berkeley” (impose some law and order on those danged hippie protestors), and a resounding 57.65% of voters sent him to Sacramento. And “clean up the mess” Reagan certainly did on May 15th, 1969 — otherwise known as “Bloody Thursday” — when Reagan sent the California Highway Patrol and National Guard to quell the People’s Park protests in Berkeley. One dead student and blinded man later, Reagan snapped, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.” The abortion debate had also begun, and although a relatively new Governor Reagan signed a pro-abortion bill, he later said he regretted it and took a pro-life position. He also strongly supported capital punishment, but only got to perform one retroactive abortion due to a Supreme Court of California decision that invalidated all death sentences from before 1972. Reagan also famously joked about hoping for a botulism epidemic when a radical Berkeley group demanded a food distribution for the poor (the Symbionese Liberation Army later went on to kidnap Patty Hearst.

In 1980, Reagan launched a presidential campaign based on states rights (a dog whistle for thelynching murder of three activists who were registering African-Americans to vote Philadelphia, MS), a strong military, supply side economics, and his signature cheeriness. By then, he’d learned to cloak then he’d learned to cloak his mean philosophy with an easy-going demeanor and off-the-cuff witticisms. He famously won in a landslide (carrying 44 states and 50.8% of the popular vote), and became the United States’ 40th president. Even many liberals and former hippies-turned-yuppie — like this writer’s father and stepmother — pulled the lever for him. Yes, this writer still holds a grudge, and yes, voting booths still had levers back then.

We now have Reagan to thank for following legacies — many of which have caused our current woes — but he rarely gets blamed because he always was the “teflon president”:

REACHING FOR AN IPAD AFTER SEX IS OK???

Even as someone who has been at the receiving end of the "I can't believe you are reaching for your phone right now!" glare once or twice — in the last 24 hours alone — I still couldn't help but cringe when I heard that 74 percent of people find it acceptable to reach for their iPads right after, ahem, being intimate with someone.

Have our gadget addictions really gotten to this point?

The statistic comes from a survey commissioned by accessory maker Logitech. A firm called Wakefield Research conducted the survey, interviewing 2,000 single adults over the age of 18 in the U.S., the U.K., Germany and France.

The survey revealed that 43 percent of single U.S.-based respondents would be equally upset about breaking their iPads as they would be about breaking up with a significant other. (Compare that to 27 percent of the German respondents. Guess they're more romantic.) Hang on though! It gets even worse: Over a third of the U.S.-based respondents — 37 percent, if you want to be precise — said that they would rather spend the "morning after" a date with their iPads rather than, well, the prior night's date.

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Of course, according to the same survey, 93 percent of the U.S.-based respondents use their tablets in bed, in general. And 27 percent even admit that they've managed to damage a tablet or smartphone while being naughty with a partner. We'll leave the rest of that detail to the imagination or file it in the "TMI" category for now.

http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2013/02/08/16900787-three-quarters-of-people-think-its-ok-to-reach-for-ipads-after-being-intimate?lite

Millennials are the most stressed-out generation, new survey finds

I’m stressed, you’re stressed, your partner is stressed, even our pets are stressed. But according a new survey from the American Psychological Association, the most stressed generation of adults in the nation is also the youngest.

So-called “Millennials,” defined here as American adults ages 18 to 34, reported higher stress levels than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, and more Millennials said that their stress level had increased in the last year. And 52 percent of this age group even said stress had kept them up at night.

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These new figures are from the APA’s annual report, Stress in America, which surveyed 2,020 American adults in a questionnaire conducted online by Harris Interactive in August 2012. The APA has commissioned the survey every year since 2007.

for more info:

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/07/16889472-millennials-are-the-most-stressed-out-generation-new-survey-finds?lite

From Huff Post:

Climate Change And The Blizzard: Nor'easters More Fierce With Global Warming, Scientists Say »

Lynne Peeples  |  February 08, 2013 at 08:40 PM

Climate change may or may not have helped generate the nor'easter lashing the East Coastthis weekend. Such storms happen with some regularity, after all. But the amount of snow the storm called "Nemo" ultimately dumps, and the extent of flood damage it leaves in its wake, may well have ties to global warming, climate scientists suggested. Michael Mann, a climatologist who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, compared a major storm ...

rand paul goes nuts.

Rand Paul Goes Rogue, Set To Deliver Unauthorized Tea Party Rebuttal To President Obama

2013/02/09

By Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario

Ever since Michele Bachmann gave the “official” Tea Party response to the 2011 State of the Union address, it’s been obvious that the GOP has completely lost control of the monster it created. Following Bachmann’s bad joke of a speech, made infinitely worse by the fact that she was looking at the wrong camera, was Herman Cain’s attempt at glory in 2012. While not as terrible as Bachmann’s performance, it was still a speech devoid of substance. Much like the Tea Party itself.

But in keeping with this tradition of finding the most extreme fringe candidate, this year’s Tea Party response will be delivered by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Gault Wanna Be). Paul will begin his speech shortly after Sen. Marco Rubio delivers the official GOP response. But why does the Tea Party need a separate response? According to a statement by Amy Kremer, chairman of the Koch funded Tea Party Express, “We are giving a voice to the tea party movement when the mainstream media and the Republican establishment wants to write us off as dead.”