10 Fascinating Facts on President Ronald Reagan’s Birthday
Posted: February 6, 2017 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Apollo program, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, NASA, President of the United States, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan Leave a comment
It’s the 106th birthday of Ronald Reagan, and since he was one of the most widely recognized world leaders, it’s not hard to find some interesting facts about the 40th president.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois. Reagan had a long career as an actor and union leader before he became the governor of California in the 1960s and won presidential elections in 1980 and 1984.
Here are 10 facts about President Reagan you may not know.
1. Reagan really did enjoy jelly beans. According to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, his favorite flavor was licorice. Reagan started eating jelly beans in 1967 as he was trying to quit a pipe-smoking habit. He switched to Jelly Bellies a decade later.
2. One food that Reagan didn’t like was brussels sprouts. This is according to the Reagan Library website. In her autobiography, Nancy Reagan said her husband wasn’t a fussy eater since he traveled on the public speaking circuit for decades, but he also didn’t like tomatoes.
3. Reagan’s nickname of “Dutch” was given to him at an early age by his family. Reagan’s ancestry is Irish on his father’s side and Scots-English on his mother’s side. The name came from his childhood haircut, among other things.
4. The future President’s last movie role was in the 1964 release, The Killers. Based on an Ernest Hemingway story, it was Reagan’s only role as a villain in a film, and it was the first made-for-TV movie. However, The Killers was considered too violent for TV, and released to movie theaters instead.
5. The future President lost partial hearing in one ear when he was hurt on a movie set in the late 1930s, after a gun was fired next to his ear. Decades later, President Reagan wrote to Michael Jackson offering his support after Jackson was burned filming a TV commercial.
6. Ronald Reagan started out in life as a Democrat and supported the New Deal efforts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Reagan officially became a Republican in 1962, but he had grown more conservative during the 1950s as he toured as a General Electric spokesman.
7. Reagan was not the original choice to star in “Casablanca,” instead of Humphrey Bogart. The urban legend over the issue is documented on snopes.com, and it started with a paragraph in a Warner Brothers’ press release issued before the movie was made. Bogart was always expected to play the lead role. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hostile Takeover Rolls On
Posted: January 20, 2017 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, CNN, Donald Trump, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President of the United States, Republican Party (United States), Ronald Reagan Leave a comment
THE BIG IDEA: President Trump completed his hostile takeover of the Republican Party last July, and on Friday he completed his hostile, if temporary, takeover of Washington.
In some significant ways, Trump is more like a corporate raider of the 1980s, when he came of age, than a typical politician of 2017. Thirty years ago, Gordon Gekko might have been more likely to deliver the speech that the billionaire businessman did today than Ronald Reagan.
No president has ever before referred to “the establishment” in his inaugural address nor declared that every country in the world ought to pursue its own self-interest. But the guy who ended the Bush dynasty and then vanquished the Clinton machine, in a period of 17 months, put “the establishment” of both parties on notice once more.
“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,” he said, as leaders from each side of the aisle looked on stoically. “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. … What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.” Read the rest of this entry »
Close Family Friend Of Clintons Arrested For Threat To Kill Donald Trump
Posted: January 19, 2017 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: Assassination attempt, Barack Obama, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Oval Office, Ronald Reagan, United States Leave a comment
Dominic Puopolo, 51, is being held without bail in Miami on charges of threatening harm against a public servant.
The man arrested by Miami Beach police Tuesday for allegedly threatening President-elect Donald Trump online is a member of a prominent northeast family close to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
He once gave $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee, DailyMail.com has learned.
Dominic Puopolo, 51, is being held without bail in Miami on charges of threatening harm against a public servant.
Suspect Dominic Puopolo Jr., 51, sat near Hillary Clinton when she delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Puopolo’s mother, Sonia, who died in one of the jets that flew into the World Trade Center on 9-11.
During that eulogy on Oct. 6, 2001 in Boston, the former presidential candidate referred to ‘Dom Jr.’s latest computer wizardry.’
The ‘wizard’ is now being held in a Miami-Dade County jail after using Twitter to threaten Trump’s life.
Trump is scheduled to be sworn in Friday in Washington, D.C. as Puopolo remains incarcerated on a charge of threatening to harm a public servant.
Puopolo reportedly admitted to posting a video to Twitter, saying: ‘This is the 16th of January 2017, I will be at the review/ inauguration and I will kill President Trump, President elect Trump today.’
Both Hillary and Bill are close friends of the Puopolo family. The suspect, according to federal elections records, gave $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1996
Hillary Clinton sits with the Puopolo family at the funeral of Dominic Puopolo’s mother Sonia, who was among 92 people on American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001, when it crashed into the World Trade Center’s north tower
He was nabbed after leaving a Washington Avenue Subway sandwich shop about 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Puopolo, however, may not be the average Trump hater.
On various social media platforms, where he posts as JesusChrist1701, the computer consultant claims to have testified in terror cases as an expert witness in a German federal court in Hamburg from 2003 to 2008.
He also says he served in the Navy.
He once posted a photo of himself holding an image of his mother in front of a wall that sports a picture of him with Colin Powell and a famous shot of Ronald Reagan.
Puopolo has published a number of pictures of outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry, whom he calls a friend.
According to news archives his mother, Sonia Mercedes Morales Puopolo was married to the wealthy Nantucket businessman Dominic J. Puopolo Sr.
She was once a professional ballet dancer and became a major philanthropist and political donor. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Declassified Dogfight Footage: F-14 Tomcat vs Libyan MiG-23
Posted: February 14, 2016 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Mediasphere, Self Defense, Space & Aviation, War Room | Tags: Dwight D. Eisenhower, F-14 Tomcats, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Grumman F-14 Tomcat, John F. Kennedy, John Pye, MiG-23 Floggers, USS John F. Kennedy 1 Comment
1989 Gulf of Sidra encounter between two F-14 Tomcats of the USS John F. Kennedy and two MiG-23 Floggers of Libya. Unsurprisingly, the Tomcats come out on top.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Posted: November 25, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, History, Self Defense, War Room, White House | Tags: 11th Marine Regiment (United States), 1st Marine Division (United States), Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Washington, Ike, Oval Office, Painting, POTUS, Presidential Portrait, U.S. Military, World War 2 1 Comment
“We must be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. We must acquire proficiency in defense and display stamina in purpose. We must be willing, individually and as a Nation, to accept whatever sacrifices may be required of us. A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
Eisenhower Presidential Inaugural Souvenir: Old Mr. Boston Brown Whiskey Bottle, 1953
Posted: January 20, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Food & Drink, History, White House | Tags: 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eisenhower, Inaguration, Old Mr. Boston Brown Whiskey, Whiskey, White House 1 Comment
Eisenhower Presidential Inaugural Souvenir 1953 Old Mr. Boston Brown Whiskey Bottle
Kate Scanlon: Barry Goldwater’s Lasting Impact on American Politics
Posted: November 16, 2014 Filed under: History, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: A Time for Choosing, American Politics, American Revolution, Barry Goldwater, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Lyndon B. Johnson, Melissa Bean, Republican Party (United States), Ronald Reagan, The Heritage Foundation 4 Comments
Barry Goldwater Ran 50 Years Ago
Kate Scanlon writes: It was 50 years ago this month that then-Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., suffered one of the most lopsided defeats in the history of presidential elections.
He carried just six states and received only 38 percent of the popular vote. Not only had Democrats worked against him, but many in his own party disavowed him because he was true to his conservative principles.
“The mere idea that ‘Barry might make it’ is enough to give the Establishment the galloping colleywobbles,” wrote the Saturday Evening Post at the time.
And when he lost, the New York Times wrote that Goldwater “not only lost the presidential election yesterday but the conservative cause as well.”
Yet 16 years later, Ronald Reagan, his political heir, won the presidency in a landslide.
He had not lost the conservative cause. Columnist George Will argued that Goldwater “lost 44 states but won the future.”
[Heritage Event: The Barry Goldwater 1964 Campaign 50th Anniversary Forum]
In fact, Lee Edwards, who worked as director of information for the Goldwater campaign and serves as a distinguished fellow in conservative thought at the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation, has called Goldwater “the most consequential loser in American politics.” Read the rest of this entry »
POLITICO’S Search For the Perfect Oxymoron
Posted: July 16, 2014 Filed under: Humor, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Contradiction, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Figure of speech, Harry Truman, Oscar Wilde, Oxymoron, Richard Nixon 1 Comment
The Search for a Communist Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Quest for a Female Richard Nixon
In Search of a Neo-Nazi Abraham Lincoln
Finding a Gay Harry Truman
The Snowmobile Craze in Death Valley
Seeking Teeny Jumbo Shrimp
Subsidized Snow Cones in Hell
Obama Uses First Person Singular 199 TIMES in Speech Vowing Unilateral Action
Posted: July 13, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Austin Texas, Barack Obama, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Interstate Highway System, Obama, Richard Nixon, White House 2 Comments
Number of Times Obama Has Accepted Blame or Taken Responsibility: 0
Terence P. Jeffrey reports: Not counting instances when he quoted a letter from a citizen or cited dialogue from a movie, President Barack Obama used the first person singular–including the pronouns “I” and “me” and the adjective “my”–199 times in a speech he delivered Thursday vowing to use unilateral executive action to achieve his policy goals that Congress would not enact through the
normal, constitutional legislative process.
“I want to assure you, I’m really not that partisan of a guy.”
“It is lonely, me just doing stuff,” Obama said at the speech in Austin, Texas, according to the official transcript and video posted on the White House website.
“I’m just telling the truth now,” Obama told the crowd. “I don’t have to run for office again, so I can just let her rip. And I want to assure you, I’m really not that partisan of a guy.”
To prove this, Obama went on to say Abraham Lincoln was his favorite president, and then gave a list of what he called “great Republican presidents”—which included Richard Nixon. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Director George Stevens’ Rare Color Footage of D-Day Invasion Released
Posted: May 29, 2014 Filed under: History, War Room | Tags: Allies of World War II, Berlin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, France, George Stevens, HMS Belfast, Leni Riefenstahl, Normandy landings, Steven, Stevens, World War II 2 CommentsThe only known Allied colour footage of World War Two was uncovered in the attic of a Hollywood director by his son
From the Telegraph.uk:
When the warship HMS Belfast fired the shot that launched the D-Day landings, it was carrying an unlikely passenger – Hollywood film director George Stevens.
With Allied forces set to storm the Normandy beaches of Nazi-occupied France, Stevens was on-board making a unique16 millimetre colour film journal.
He had made his name in the 1930s, directing the likes of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in ‘Swing Time‘ (1936) and Cary Grant in ‘Gunga Din‘ (1939).
But in 1942, after seeing Leni Riefenstahl‘s Nazi propaganda movies, Stevens enlisted.
General Dwight Eisenhower assigned him to head up the combat motion-picture coverage, a unit covering the war in black-and-white 35 millimetre film for newsreels and military archives.
“We thought at the time that this was the only colour film of the war in Europe. As it turned out, there was some German film that had not yet been discovered”
But while documenting the Allied forces’ advance towards Berlin, he took with him a 16 millimetre camera and boxes of Kodachrome film on which he would shoot a personal visual diary of the war.
The film canisters of the war were developed back in the US, but Stevens stored them and for decades they went untouched.
That changed when his son, George Stevens Jr, also a filmmaker, decided to make a documentary on his father’s life and was amazed to discover what he found.
An emotional Stevens remembers the first time he watched the films, astonished to see his young father heading to France on HMS Belfast. Read the rest of this entry »
The Party of Innovation: Copyright Reform, Anyone?
Posted: May 14, 2014 Filed under: Politics, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Business, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Joseph Schumpeter, Republicans, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan 1 Comment
For The American Conservative, Derek Khanna writes: In 200 years the United States went from being a colonial backwater to being the world’s dominant economic and military power. How did our nation arise from obscurity, break free from the grip of the most powerful empire on earth, and skyrocket to global leadership? With a government focused on innovation—not control.
“…If Republicans understand this and thereby embrace the mantle of innovation, not only will they be expediting a new wave of ingenuity, but they will also share credit with entrepreneurs for the next tech boom.”
Historically, the Republican Party has led on technological innovation. President Abraham Lincoln earned a patent and facilitated the first transcontinental railroad system. President Hoover played a key role in the early development of radio broadcasting, and President Coolidge created our national airways system. Dwight D. Eisenhower inaugurated NASA and DARPA, while Richard Nixon launched the cable television industry through deregulation. President Ronald Reagan made GPS available for civilian use and greatly expanded science research.
But today policymakers and the regulatory state are smothering the force that allowed us to become the world’s economic superpower. Incumbent industries have co-opted the legal and regulatory systems to go after their competitors, and both political parties have been complicit in this cronyism. Acceptance of these regulatory and legal barriers is a root cause of our abysmal “new normal” of 2 percent annual GDP growth. Read the rest of this entry »
Document of the Day: Eisenhower Reaches Out to the Russian People…
Posted: March 4, 2014 Filed under: History, War Room | Tags: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eisenhower, History, Joseph Stalin, Soviet Union, Stalin, United States, World War II 1 Comment
On March 4, 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower drafted this statement for the Russian people while Joseph Stalin was gravely ill. Stalin died the next day on March 5, 1953.
Draft statement by President Eisenhower on Joseph Stalin, 03/04/1953
Martin Luther King Jr. Was Harassed By The IRS, Too
Posted: January 20, 2014 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, History | Tags: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Martin Luther King, martin luther king day, Montgomery Improvement Association, Obama administration, SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference 3 Comments
Martin Luther King giving his address at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington,DC, Aug. 28, 1963.
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: Tallahassee Democrat, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the IRS:
This past year, much ado was made about the so-called “IRS-Gate” and concerns that the Obama administration may have used the agency to target Tea Party and other right wing groups. … [W]hat often is not stated during the Martin Luther King Holiday weekend is that King, early in his leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), was routinely subjected to IRS audits of his individual accounts, SCLC accounts as well as accounts of his lawyers, first starting during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower and continuing through the Kennedy administration…
The Politics of Loss
Posted: October 18, 2013 Filed under: History, Politics, Reading Room, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Democrat, Democratic Party, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George W. Bush, Harold Lasswell, Lyndon B. Johnson, Welfare, World War II 1 Comment
The politics of deciding who loses what, and when and how, is upon us. Neither party yet fully understands the implications of this shift
Jay Cost writes: When political scientist Harold Lasswell, writing in the mid-1930s, defined politics as the decisions society makes about “who gets what, when, and how,” he might as well have been describing the debate over taxes and spending in the United States today. But what happens when the focus of the political debate changes from who gets what to who loses what? This concept is unfamiliar to Americans, who have enjoyed more than 100 years of (mostly) uninterrupted economic growth. Read the rest of this entry »
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