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Alabama Sen. Shelby: 'I couldn't vote for Roy Moore'

I don't really know anyone who credits Truman more than FDR for the Allies winning WWII.

Maybe he gets the credit because it is easy to credit the guy who was in office when the opposing super-power fell. Much easier than analyzing the complexity of Eastern European society/economics. Does Reagan get credit for arming the Mujahideen? Does he get credit for the Polish protests? Does he get credit for Gorbachev being a moderate compared to his predecessors?

Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread, folks, and I more often than not agree with you Glen, but the whole "Reagan won the Cold War" claim is, to me, a very simplistic perspective.



It is not that I don't believe in giving credit where its due, its just I am hard-pressed to find where exactly Reagan did anything, other than give a stirring speech, that really caused the fall of the USSR.

I wish Winston Churchill had been able to exert more influence on FDR in regard to the Soviet Union’s intentions after WW2. Too much territory was ceded and existed behind the “Iron Curtain” until the late 1980’s.
 
A man with principles. Sadly many in the Party of Lincoln have sold themselves out.

Yeah. He believed in arming and training terrorists and placing landmines throughout the countryside of Nicaragua. Reagan is directly and indirectly responsible for the death of thousands and the suffering of millions. Another liberal coming out of the woodwork to show their support for terrorism because those are the principles many establishment liberals and the GOP long for.
 
Huh?

I wasn't aware.

Alright, I suppose I can add that to his very tiny pile of good deeds. Though they are ridiculously overshadowed by his pile of bad, with the tax cuts being perhaps most prominent.

I am in complete agreement with you. And I think Barney the Dinosaur - the purple one, not the former congressman - would be a better representative of America to the world than Trump is.
 
I don't really know anyone who credits Truman more than FDR for the Allies winning WWII.

Maybe he gets the credit because it is easy to credit the guy who was in office when the opposing super-power fell. Much easier than analyzing the complexity of Eastern European society/economics. Does Reagan get credit for arming the Mujahideen? Does he get credit for the Polish protests? Does he get credit for Gorbachev being a moderate compared to his predecessors?

Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread, folks, and I more often than not agree with you Glen, but the whole "Reagan won the Cold War" claim is, to me, a very simplistic perspective.



It is not that I don't believe in giving credit where its due, its just I am hard-pressed to find where exactly Reagan did anything, other than give a stirring speech, that really caused the fall of the USSR.

It wasn't just his speeches. It was also his ramping up of our defense, which forced the USSR to keep up and placed them under great economic pressure. It was also his reaching out to the USSR (which may or may not have been sincere) on several occasions in diplomatic moves such as when he proposed developing "Star Wars" anti-missile defense - which he'd then share with the Soviets.

There was more, but it boils down to this: the one in charge gets the credit and the blame for whatever happens on his watch. That's how it is with every unit in the military, and that's how it is with the commander-in-chief. Let me give an illustration: a captain's ship runs aground while he's getting a couple hours' sleep in his cabin at oh-dark-thirty. When he goes before the Board of Inquiry, he'll state that he was not in his rack, but was physically on watch on the bridge. He'll say, "I had the conn" when he obviously didn't.

Now why would he say that when everyone present knows it's a lie? He says it because the captain of a ship is responsible for whatever happens on that ship, for all the actions by any crewmembers on that ship, even if he had had no direct influence at all. If the Navigator didn't make sure a qualified person was on watch, or didn't make sure the maps were up-to-date, it's the captain's fault for not making sure that the Navigator did his job. If a crewmember assaults someone while on liberty - whether stateside or overseas - it's the captain's fault for not ensuring that discipline was observed and upheld among the crew.

Come to think of it, it's sorta like being a husband - it's all your fault, even if it isn't...because even if you didn't have anything to do with it happening, you weren't proactive enough to prevent it from happening.

So that's why the captain gets all the credit and all the blame for whatever happens on his watch...and so it goes with the commander-in-chief of the Ship of State. And don't get me started on Plato's ship-of-state metaphor - it's very accurate, and not for the reasons you might think, but that takes a bit more typing.
 
I wish Winston Churchill had been able to exert more influence on FDR in regard to the Soviet Union’s intentions after WW2. Too much territory was ceded and existed behind the “Iron Curtain” until the late 1980’s.

Churchill had feet of clay, too (e.g. the famine in India) - but I feel that in the final analysis, he was the greatest world leader of the 20th century. It's not hard to guess what his opinion of Trump would be.
 
Churchill had feet of clay, too (e.g. the famine in India) - but I feel that in the final analysis, he was the greatest world leader of the 20th century. It's not hard to guess what his opinion of Trump would be.

I’d pay to hear the speech!
 
That is some of the most ridiculous revisionist history I've ever seen...

Ostensibly...

The Supreme Soviet recognized the end of the Soviet union in December of 1991 and all soviet operations ended that year, when "Russia" took over.
Lech Walesa became president in December of 1990
The Reunification of Germany happened in October of 1990
The East German Secret Police, the Stasi, ended in January 1990.
The Tianenmen Square riots also happened in june 1989
Yugoslavia dissolved in june, 1990
The Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989


Any one of these monumental events could symbolize the end of the Cold war and they all happened after Reagan left office. I challenge you to find anything even remotely as significant that happened during Reagan's presidency. The mental gymnastics that the establishment has gone through in order to excuse Reagan's failures in office are monumental. That liberals are coming out of the woodwork to give rave reviews to Reagan and Bush of all people, shows me that Trump is definitely on the right track. When the people who are directly responsible for this nations failures are the ones having a temper tantrum about Trump then that just means he's on the right track.

1. I think Bush 41 was a very underrated president, and I've said so many, many times. In fact, Obama said the same thing of him.

2. But while the fat lady didn't sing until Bush 41 was president, Reagan had gotten her to warm up and ready to walk onto the stage. What you're forgetting is that while all those happened in 89-91, the USSR's economy was already crumbling before Reagan left in January '89, and the changes behind the Iron Curtain were already beginning behind the scenes. It really isn't much different from FDR - and not Truman - getting the credit for America winning in WWII.
 
Eisenhower?

No.

Don't get me wrong - I think very highly of Eisenhower, and if you'll check, except for a few notable items like LGBTQ rights and immigration, the 1956 GOP party platform wasn't much different from Obama's 2012 platform. But during his presidency, while Eisenhower did keep America safe and did build our economy through infrastructure (our interstate freeway system) and through a sensible tax policy, he never faced the degree of immediate crisis that Obama did on his first day, and he never faced anything like the degree of political opposition that Obama faced.
 
As you said yourself, Reagan got in at the time the USSR was falling apart... so why do you give him the credit for ending it? The real threat of a hot war would have been under Eisenhower or JFK.

That is a stretch. The USSR did not collapse until George HW Bush was president..though it did begin during the Reagan administration. And while i would not give Reagan all of the credit he certainly does deserve a larger share of the credit then anyone else. he was the one who finally convinced the Russians that they were nopt going to be able to win an arms race with the USA and still manage to feed their population.
 
As you said yourself, Reagan got in at the time the USSR was falling apart... so why do you give him the credit for ending it? The real threat of a hot war would have been under Eisenhower or JFK.

No, I never said that Reagan "got in at the time the USSR was falling apart". I would never have said that - did I mistype something?

And while you're right that Eisenhower and JFK faced a greater likelihood of a deliberate war, I believe that the closest we got to a global thermonuclear exchange was when it was prevented by this Soviet military officer.

That being said, the fall of a great empire is a very dangerous time indeed - most don't go gently into that good night. Reagan (and Bush 41 and Gorbachev) held the line in the relatively sudden decline in the last few years of the USSR...but I still give the lion's share of the credit to Reagan, for if he hadn't shown a greatly-increased American military power combined with a solid bloc of American political will, the USSR may well have attacked. Of course we'll never know for sure, but I won't gripe...and I'll continue to give the credit to Reagan for getting us through those most dangerous years.
 
This leads me to believe that Moore's time before the Senate Ethics Committee may not be the slam-dunk pass, that I thought it might be.

Moore will have his day in the senate hearings

I don’t know if he gets through those or not....depends on how the women hold up on their testimony under oath

Will he just resign? Will he fight ? Who knows....but I want the women to have the proverbial day in court
 
The U.S. treasury has paid out more than 17 million dollars as part of a slush fund to sexual assault victims as a result of inappropriate behavior of members of Congress. Many of those members are still serving. Before even thinking about starting some crap with more, the ethics committee should investigate the people still in office right now. For example...the people might choose Moore, warts and all knowing his history. There are member in Congress right now that are serving and people don't know the details of what they have done. Start there, with those people currently serving.

Well before you can run the vermin out you should patch the hole they got in through... :)

Keeping another child molester out of Congress is a good start, once that is done then you can start running off the others. (Makes no sense to allow more vermin in if you are serious about keeping your eggs.

Now it seems Trump doesn't want to drain the swamp, just turn it into a cesspool... :roll:

A cynical man might think the GOP is hoping for a Moore win, then remove him from office and allow the GOP Governor to appoint a new, more moral person.

If you was to be that cynical... :peace
 
Moore will have his day in the senate hearings

I don’t know if he gets through those or not....depends on how the women hold up on their testimony under oath

Will he just resign? Will he fight ? Who knows....but I want the women to have the proverbial day in court
I'm happy to predict two of the three:

1] He will not resign
2] He will fight
3] Women holding up ... unknown ... TBD
 
Well before you can run the vermin out you should patch the hole they got in through... :)

Keeping another child molester out of Congress is a good start, once that is done then you can start running off the others. (Makes no sense to allow more vermin in if you are serious about keeping your eggs.

Now it seems Trump doesn't want to drain the swamp, just turn it into a cesspool... :roll:

A cynical man might think the GOP is hoping for a Moore win, then remove him from office and allow the GOP Governor to appoint a new, more moral person.

If you was to be that cynical... :peace
That's my line! ;)
 
And... so what? Vote for a Democrat who's going to support policies that harm nearly most of the country?

So you want to vote for Moore in order to preserve the GOP's power in Washington?

A wise Man once said, "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?" There is always a time and place to demand honor and integrity - this is one of them. I only wish that y'all had demanded honor and integrity before choosing a guy who repeatedly and publicly took the word of the ex-KGB colonel in the Kremlin over that of our CIA, NSA, and FBI.
 
Well before you can run the vermin out you should patch the hole they got in through... :)

Keeping another child molester out of Congress is a good start, once that is done then you can start running off the others. (Makes no sense to allow more vermin in if you are serious about keeping your eggs.

Now it seems Trump doesn't want to drain the swamp, just turn it into a cesspool... :roll:

A cynical man might think the GOP is hoping for a Moore win, then remove him from office and allow the GOP Governor to appoint a new, more moral person.

If you was to be that cynical... :peace
That logic doesn't follow. If the Senate was as concerned as they're pretending to be they'd have ethics committees ages ago investigating all these people who paid out to victims. Otherwise it screams of hypocrisy from everyone in the Senate. And as I contended earlier; the people of Alabama see Moore's problems and decided to elect him anyway. What about all those other people in the Senate right now that don't have to face their voters with accusations and just hide while keeping things under wraps? And btw, all at tax-payer expense. There is no proof of Moore doing anything wrong but payouts show wrong-doing.
 
And... so what? Vote for a Democrat who's going to support policies that harm nearly most of the country?

What if I told you.....

iu



....you didn't have to vote for either of the Major parties...
 
No, I never said that Reagan "got in at the time the USSR was falling apart". I would never have said that - did I mistype something?

My bad, I misread this:

and he got us through it to the point where the USSR was falling apart by the time he left office...

Personally, I've always viewed the USSR's loss in Afghanistan as the beginning of the end.

That being said, the fall of a great empire is a very dangerous time indeed - most don't go gently into that good night. Reagan (and Bush 41 and Gorbachev) held the line in the relatively sudden decline in the last few years of the USSR...but I still give the lion's share of the credit to Reagan, for if he hadn't shown a greatly-increased American military power combined with a solid bloc of American political will, the USSR may well have attacked. Of course we'll never know for sure, but I won't gripe...and I'll continue to give the credit to Reagan for getting us through those most dangerous years.

Empires often go out in a whimper. The greatest empire in history, Rome, did just that. Now, I am not saying Reagan did not do his part, but I just see the fall of the USSR as more to do with internal issues and Gorbachev's reforms than anything he did. The USSR was on its way out with or without him.

But I won't derail the thread any longer. We'll have to just agree to disagree, and more often than not you and I agree. Just one of those things in history that always bugged me :)
 
That is a stretch. The USSR did not collapse until George HW Bush was president..

I know the USSR collapsed under Bush. When I said "falling apart" I meant the beginning of its collapse.


And while i would not give Reagan all of the credit he certainly does deserve a larger share of the credit then anyone else.

I suppose if one were to give a US president credit over the USSR's collapse one could give it to Reagan, but as I said to Glen, I see the collapse as more internal than anything any US president did.
 
I know the USSR collapsed under Bush. When I said "falling apart" I meant the beginning of its collapse.




I suppose if one were to give a US president credit over the USSR's collapse one could give it to Reagan, but as I said to Glen, I see the collapse as more internal than anything any US president did.

But telling the story that way does not let us be full of ourselves.
 
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