the gipper

blogger won't let me upload pics, but:

Ronald Reagan is the reason jelly belly jellybeans are popular. Know what else? the internet told me that:

At age 69, he was the oldest person elected President. Before entering politics, Reagan was a popular motion picture actor, as well as head of the Screen Actors Guild, and a motivational speaker.

He was the only U.S. President to be shot by an assassin (on March 30, 1981) while in office and survive.

They extracted a .22 caliber slug from the President's wrinkly, 70-year-old left lung. Next, the doctors filled the damaged areas with patching compound, waited for it to dry, then sanded, primed, and slapped on two coats of high-gloss paint, tinted to match the coloration of healthy tissue. In no time at all, Reagan was on the mend.

in 1987, Reagan admitted to selling arms secretly to Iran in exchange for hostages -- feeding the fire from both ends, as it were. Responding to questions about his role in the use of profits from those sales to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua, Reagan famously offered: "I don't recall."

Everybody knew he was a dumbass. Ronald Reagan was famous for not understanding how government works and not particularly caring about it. His job was to read speeches off the Teleprompter, shake hands with foreign dignitaries, pose for pictures, and maybe go out and visit a flag factory or a steel mill every once in a while. Otherwise he was busy sleeping in, eating jellybeans, and watching television.


1979
Ronald Reagan: "The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees."


1981
Senator John Schmitz from California reveals during a television interview that, if President Reagan's policies fail, "the best we could probably hope for is a military coup, or something like that." He refines his statement somewhat by explaining that he's referring to "a good military coup, not a bad military coup."


1982
Ronald Reagan has a small benign polyp removed from his colon.

7 Jun 1982
President Ronald Reagan falls asleep during a meeting with Pope John Paul II.


4 May 1988
During a question-and-answer session in Chicago, President Reagan revisits his 'invaders from space' notion: "I've often wondered, what if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by an outer -- a power from outer space, from another planet. Wouldn't we all of a sudden find that we didn't have any differences between us at all, we were all human beings, citizens of the world, and wouldn't we come together to fight that particular threat?"

9 Dec 1988
Ronald Reagan undergoes surgery to extract a polyp from his large intestine. It is the 15th polyp removed from the President during his tenure.

5 Nov 1994
Reagan announces he has Alzheimer's. The hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow promptly claims responsibility.