# Think Tank > History >  Was Reagan the worst President in US history?

## enhanced_deficit

Was Reagan the worst President in US history?

Considering  that of all US Presidents in history  Reagan was  the biggest supporter/funder of violent extremist Islamist  Jihadis  and  that 9/11  & resulting   Iraqi/Afghan Freedom wars cost America  trillions of dollars and injury/death of millions of Americans.

He even dedicated Space Shuttle launch to honor violent Islamist Jihadi militants.      Al Qaeda was birthed in sanctury of same Jihadi militants. Even to this day, America is still engaged in its longest war in history fighting the very militants Reagan armed/funded.
Just this week, two US troops were killed in Afghanistan. Many more have died/lost limbs in past 17 years .








Related

Iraq/Afghanistan wars disabled 624,000 US troops , Divorces  up 42%, Foreclosures up 217%

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## enhanced_deficit

*Deep into the red: US national debt per family, 1816 to 2016*

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## TommyJeff

Hard to beat FDR when the subject is ‘worst President ‘

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## RonZeplin

And then there was the Reagan(R) Amnesty which resulted in millions of illegal aliens, and their families back home coming here too, and becoming US citizens.   

 Ike Eisenhower's 1954 Operation Wetback  deported tens of thousands of illegal aliens, and many more self deported when they realized that they could be next.   About a million or so illegal aliens left the USA as a result of just enforcing the rule of law.  That's what presidents are supposed to do as chief executive.  It's been so long since we had a law abiding president that people forget that.  The kids nowadays were never taught that in publik skoolz.   

Reagan accepted George Herbert Walker Bush as his VP, and along with that came The New World Order, globalism, and open borders.  


President George W. Bush(R), 2004 reelection campaign. His amnesty bill failed but his terrorism funding and recruitment were very successful. Millions of terrorist "political refugees" continue to be welcomed with open arms by the US gov.  

Ron Paul warned us about blowback.

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## Swordsmyth

> Hard to beat FDR when the subject is ‘worst President ‘


^^^THIS^^^

Wilson is another contender that leaves Reagan in the dust.
Also Lincoln.
And LBJ.

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## donnay

> Was Reagan the worst President in US history?
> 
> Considering  that of all US Presidents in history  Reagan was  the biggest supporter/funder of violent extremist Islamist  Jihadis  and  that 9/11  & resulting   Iraqi/Afghan Freedom wars cost America  trillions of dollars and injury/death of millions of Americans.
> 
> He even dedicated Space Shuttle launch to honor violent Islamist Jihadi militants.      Al Qaeda was birthed in sanctury of same Jihadi militants. Even to this day, America is still engaged in its longest war history fighting the very militants Reagan armed/funded.
> Just this week, two US troops were killed in Afghanistan. Many more have died/lost limbs in past 17 years .


Nope Reagan was not, however he had the worst Veep.  Osama Bin Laden was a CIA asset and Reagan's Veep was a former CIA Chief.  I believe Reagan was trying to make a difference and when he was making that difference, he was nearly assassinated by a Bush Family friend's son.  If he didn't toe-the-line the next attempt would be fatal--IMHO.

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## Swordsmyth

> Nope Reagan was not, however he had the worst Veep.  Osama Bin Laden was a CIA asset and Reagan's Veep was a former CIA Chief.  I believe Reagan was trying to make a difference and when he was making that difference, he was nearly assassinated by a Bush Family friend's son.  If he didn't toe-the-line the next attempt would be fatal--IMHO.


The same thing would have happened if Trump had picked Jeb for VP.

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## donnay

> The same thing would have happened if Trump had picked Jeb for VP.


That's why I think Trump has been paying attention for a long time.  He hit Jeb coming out of the gate.

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## AuH20

> Was Reagan the worst President in US history?
> 
> Considering  that of all US Presidents in history  Reagan was  the biggest supporter/funder of violent extremist Islamist  Jihadis  and  that 9/11  & resulting   Iraqi/Afghan Freedom wars cost America  trillions of dollars and injury/death of millions of Americans.
> 
> He even dedicated Space Shuttle launch to honor violent Islamist Jihadi militants.      Al Qaeda was birthed in sanctury of same Jihadi militants. Even to this day, America is still engaged in its longest war history fighting the very militants Reagan armed/funded.
> Just this week, two US troops were killed in Afghanistan. Many more have died/lost limbs in past 17 years .


Read up on Brzezinski/Carter first.

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## TommyJeff

> ^^^THIS^^^
> 
> Wilson is another contender that leaves Reagan in the dust.
> Also Lincoln.
> And LBJ.


This list of worst presidents is getting rather long.  Ha!

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## dannno

9/11 was an inside job

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## ThePaleoLibertarian

No, but his administration did fully transform American conservatism into a form of neoliberal cosmopolitanism. Definitely one of the most overrated presidents in US history.

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## Krugminator2

> No, but his administration did fully transform American conservatism into a form of neoliberal cosmopolitanism. Definitely one of the most overrated presidents in US history.


So you are saying conservatism was better when Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Rockefeller, Ike, etc were the standard bearers?  I'll take Goldwater/Reagan.

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## ThePaleoLibertarian

> So you are saying conservatism was better when Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Rockefeller, Ike, etc were the standard bearers?  I'll take Goldwater/Reagan.


None of those guys were conservatives.

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## Sammy

Ronald Reagan was not a good President but the worst? Come on
Reagan is 10 times better than Presidents like George W Bush,Bill Clinton,Barack Obama & Donald Trump

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## fisharmor

> None of those guys were conservatives.


We could "No True Scotsman" this thing to death, or we could collectively come to the realization that if none of those guys were conservatives, then there is functionally no such thing as conservatism.

If we're supporting political fairies and unicorns, I'm always going to side with the unicorn of "no state at all", because I can point to historical examples of that actually existing... in direct contrast to the myth of the "conservative government".

It's a tough pill to swallow, but what we have, right now, in the USA, is minarchy.

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## pcosmar

I think of Reagan Era as the first Bush era...

and another Republican disappointment.

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## pcosmar

> None of those guys were conservatives.


And I'm a Conservative Hippy.

Ron represented me,,,  the rest, not so much.

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## Swordsmyth

> We could "No True Scotsman" this thing to death, or we could collectively come to the realization that if none of those guys were conservatives, then there is functionally no such thing as conservatism.
> 
> If we're supporting political fairies and unicorns, I'm always going to side with the unicorn of "no state at all", because I can point to historical examples of that actually existing... in direct contrast to the myth of the "conservative government".
> 
> It's a tough pill to swallow, but what we have, right now, in the USA, is minarchy.

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## Swordsmyth

> I think of Reagan Era as the first Bush era...
> 
> and another Republican disappointment.


After the assassination attempt it was, that is why Bush Sr. didn't even try to beat Clinton in 92, he had had his two terms and an extra one to make him an offcial president in the history books.

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## pcosmar

> After the assassination attempt it was, that is why Bush Sr. didn't even try to beat Clinton in 92, he had had his two terms and an extra one to make him an offcial president in the history books.


Clinton continued the agenda..  Team Work.

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## Krugminator2

> Clinton continued the agenda..  Team Work.


Clinton was a continuation of Reagan but in some ways better. He was nothing like Bush.  He implemented NAFTA. Cut the capital gains rate. Encouraged saving with the development of Roth IRAs. Signed welfare reform into law. Had a regulatory freeze while he was in office. He did plenty of bad things especially his first two years but on balance did a pretty good job.

I think it laughable how people dump on Reagan. He was certainly the best modern President and arguably the best President in US history. He ended a lot of the bad Carter policies which discouraged oil production that lead to the gas shortages. He took the political hit to beat inflation. Reagan had the worst economy since the Depression to beat inflation, which set up 20 years of prosperity. Reagan had a pretty good foreign policy and effective in bringing down Communism and reducing the nuclear threat of the USSR. He took the top tax rate from 80% down to 28%.   He had a Democratic House so he couldn't do everything he wanted.  It is easy to criticize things like the budget when you don't take any of the historical context into account. Reagan played as large of a role of anyone in ending union power.  I could watch Reagan fire the air traffic controllers all day long. 





I think Ron Paul is way better on philosophy. But as a President? I'll take Reagan over Ron and Rand and Amash.  Reagan was a great negotiator,  salesman, and leader.  Every town should have at least one street named after Ronald Reagan. If I have kids, at least one will be named after Reagan in some way.

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## Anti Globalist

Trump said Ronald Reagan is his favorite president.

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## ThePaleoLibertarian

> We could "No True Scotsman" this thing to death,


It's not a "no true Scotsman". It's a statement of fact. None of those people mentioned were considered conservatives, by contemporaries or by themselves. Rockefeller was very explicitly a moderate, running against the conservative wing of the GOP, led by Barry Goldwater. The only one who's even close is Eisenhower, but he was considered a pragmatic military man more than a conservative. I'm not talking about some platonic ideal of conservatism that they don't fit.




> or we could collectively come to the realization that if none of those guys were conservatives, then there is functionally no such thing as conservatism.


No, they weren't conservatives because they weren't conservatives. American conservatism as an explicit movement is relatively young, though they trace their tradition back to John Adams and John C. Calhoun. There is such a thing as a conservative. Russell Kirk, Pat Buchanan, Roger Scruton, Peter Hitchens. All conservatives.




> If we're supporting political fairies and unicorns,


That is not what we're doing.




> I'm always going to side with the unicorn of "no state at all", because I can point to historical examples of that actually existing... in direct contrast to the myth of the "conservative government".


The idea that statelessness is something historical, but conservatism is not is a bizarre and false claim.




> It's a tough pill to swallow, but what we have, right now, in the USA, is minarchy.


An even more bizarre claim. You're full of 'em, it seems.

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## fisharmor

> It's not a "no true Scotsman". It's a statement of fact. None of those people mentioned were considered conservatives, by contemporaries or by themselves. Rockefeller was very explicitly a moderate, running against the conservative wing of the GOP, led by Barry Goldwater. The only one who's even close is Eisenhower, but he was considered a pragmatic military man more than a conservative. I'm not talking about some platonic ideal of conservatism that they don't fit.....
> There is such a thing as a conservative. Russell Kirk, Pat Buchanan, Roger Scruton, Peter Hitchens. All conservatives.


And there is such a thing as anarchists: Lew Rockwell, Thomas Woods, David Friedman...  The point I was making is that both conservatism and statelessness have an equivalent level of representation in our current government: none.  Moreover, the public servants, both historical and current, who people tend to point to as "conservative" are impostors, even by your admission.
If conservatism exists strictly in magazines and think tanks, then it doesn't exist at all.




> The idea that statelessness is something historical, but conservatism is not is a bizarre and false claim.


What conservative government can you point to?  I'm not intending to be challenging: the main reason I abandoned it as a philosophy is because I literally couldn't find a single example of a genuinely conservative government.  All I find is people who claimed to be conservative and then sold us a bill of goods.




> An even more bizarre claim. You're full of 'em, it seems.


We live in one of the few experiments in actually trying to put checks and balances on state power.
Minarchy is what got written down as the compact.
It's absolutely no different from when you throw the USSR in the face of communists and they say "but they did X which wasn't the original intent".
They don't get to say it's going to work differently next time we try communism, and neither do you get to say minarchy is going to work differently next time.

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## ThePaleoLibertarian

> And there is such a thing as anarchists: Lew Rockwell, Thomas Woods, David Friedman...


Yeah, I know. I used to be one too. I never said there was no such thing as anarchists. I probably know more about anarchism (not just anarcho-capitalism) than 99% of people on this site.




> The point I was making is that both conservatism and statelessness have an equivalent level of representation in our current government: none. Moreover, the public servants, both historical and current, who people tend to point to as "conservative" are impostors, even by your admission.


This may all be true, but it has far more to do with the nature of democracy, the march of leftism than it has to do with conservatism. Cthulhu swims left, as Moldbug would say. It's a feature, not a bug, of liberal democracy. I'd be happy as a clam, was I a leftist. Too bad for them, they're constantly enraged.




> If conservatism exists strictly in magazines and think tanks, then it doesn't exist at all.


It exists as the rear guard of progressivism. The conservatives of today are the progressives of 20 years ago. Society lurches left, the conservatives come in to "conserve" the previous piece of leftist "progress" that the new leftists now claim is reactionary and regressive.





> What conservative government can you point to?


The nature of liberal democracy makes that impossible to find under said system, at least for long periods of time. The US was relatively conservative in the 1920s and the 1950s. Examples of conservatism examples are Singapore, Spain under Franco, Chile under Pinochet, and Japan for most of its history until after World War II. 




> I'm not intending to be challenging: the main reason I abandoned it as a philosophy is because I literally couldn't find a single example of a genuinely conservative government. All I find is people who claimed to be conservative and then sold us a bill of goods.


Again, democracy.




> We live in one of the few experiments in actually trying to put checks and balances on state power.
> Minarchy is what got written down as the compact.


No, it was at best an attempt to engineer minarchy. But the founders were wrong about statecraft. Dividing a government against itself doesn't keep its size in check, it incentivizes each part of the government to acquire more and more power for itself. 




> It's absolutely no different from when you throw the USSR in the face of communists and they say "but they did X which wasn't the original intent".


It isn't, because I'm not saying we're going to get minarchy by voting for conservatives. 




> They don't get to say it's going to work differently next time we try communism, and neither do you get to say minarchy is going to work differently next time.


I'm not saying that. I'm saying we need to rethink statecraft and re-engineer liberalism.

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## enhanced_deficit

Decades later, violent extremism that Ronnie helped instigate is still costing lives and treasure.
If future historians confirmed that showbiz trained actor turned  politician Ronnie Reagan was indeed 'Founding Father of ISIS 1.0' in  Afghansitan and responsible for millions of lives destroyned due to his policy of supporting/arming violent jihadi extremists and terrists, hopefully  future war crimes prosecution won't go back to olden posthumous trials and justice methods.

Source  is  Forever Wars pushing lobbies' mouthpiece and fake Iraq yellow cake narrative manufacturer NYT,  so exercise caution while consuming this news:


*Violence May Delay U.S. Troop Withdrawal From Afghanistan*

The   Biden administration is reviewing a deal between its predecessor and   the Taliban for a May 1 deadline to pull all American troops out of the   country.

Jan 29, 2021

*The  Pentagon raised doubts on Thursday that the U.S.  military would  withdraw from Afghanistan by May 1 — the deadline set in  a February 2020  agreement with the Taliban — after accusing the  Taliban of failing to  uphold its commitments under the deal.*

We  are still involved in trying to get a negotiated settlement. The   Taliban have not met their commitments. As you know, there is a looming   deadline of early May that is before everybody in terms of, you know,   wanting to have a solution here, *but without them meeting their   commitments to renounce terrorism and to stop the violent attacks on the   Afghan national security forces — and, you know, by dint of that, the   Afghan people — it’s very hard to see a specific way forward for the   negotiated settlement*. But we’re still committed to that. So, we’re down   to 2,500 right now. Both General Miller, the commander in Afghanistan,   and of course, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, have   made it clear that they believe that that is a sufficient number to   accomplish the mission, which is largely a counterterrorism mission   right now. I would say this to the leaders of the Taliban: that it is   going to be — they make it that much more difficult for final decisions   to be made about force presence by their reticence to commit to   reasonable, sustainable and credible negotiations at the table.

nytimes.com/2021/01/29/world/asia/afghanistan-withdrawal-ghani-biden.html

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## Anti Globalist

I'm pretty sure Wilson,LBJ, Obama, and Biden are all worst than Reagan.

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## RJB

Biden saw this thread and said, "Hold my beer."

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## tebowlives

> Biden saw this thread and said, "Hold my beer."


More like, "I forgot where I put my beer".

The problem with Reagan was the debt and spending. Others not keeping their word isn't as bad as your guy not keeping their word.

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## Krugminator2

> More like, "I forgot where I put my beer".
> 
> The problem with Reagan was the debt and spending. Others not keeping their word isn't as bad as your guy not keeping their word.






> When the budget is looked at as a share of the economy, Reagan’s legacy looks a bit better from a small government perspective. Federal revenues as a share of gross domestic product fell from 19.6 percent in 1981 to 18.3 percent by 1989. Spending fell from 22.2 percent to 21.2 percent. Thus, Ronald Reagan shrank the federal government by about 5 percent — a less radical change than supporters or detractors often claim.


Budgets originate in the House. The Dems had 100+ vote majorities in the House. https://history.house.gov/Institutio...ns/74-Present/

It is a popular talking point to $#@! on Reagan for spending but what should Reagan have done? Point a gun at their heads and start executing people until they voted to cut spending.  He pushed a balanced budget amendment that got voted down. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-a4a88859a595/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-b1282af03a52/

Reagan vetoed numerous spending bills https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/26/u...1-billion.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...748-story.html 

The reality is Reagan did a great job on spending relative to the circumstances. That is in contrast to Trump who had a Republican House and Senate majorities.

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## Firestarter

The Iran-Contra tale was much worse than what Bonesman John Kerry cooked up.
The "Iran" side of the equation is that the Bush-Reagan team promised Iran arms to keep the American hostage drama going until Reagan would be elected president.

The Contras were helping Bush and Reagan to flood the US with cocaine, which led to the crack epidemic that destroyed black neighbourhoods in all major American cities.

*The following picture shows from right to left Ronald Reagan, Oliver North, Adolfo Calero (CIA operative installed as FDN commander) on 4 April 1985.


In the following picture are Adolfo Calero (centre) and drug lord Norwin Meneses on the far right, around June 1984*


Drugs-profits-for-Oil-wars#post6451729

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## tebowlives

> Budgets originate in the House. The Dems had 100+ vote majorities in the House. https://history.house.gov/Institutio...ns/74-Present/
> 
> It is a popular talking point to $#@! on Reagan for spending but what should Reagan have done? Point a gun at their heads and start executing people until they voted to cut spending.  He pushed a balanced budget amendment that got voted down. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-a4a88859a595/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-b1282af03a52/
> 
> Reagan vetoed numerous spending bills https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/26/u...1-billion.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...748-story.html 
> 
> The reality is Reagan did a great job on spending relative to the circumstances. That is in contrast to Trump who had a Republican House and Senate majorities.


He should have vetod increased spending like he said he would. 
Not ask for more foreign aid money than what Congress was initially wanting to give out.
Said he would end the Department of Energy and didn't.
Said the same thing about the Dept of Education and that departments budget more than doubled.

Reagan keeping Volcker was a good move

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## Krugminator2

> He should have vetod increased spending like he said he would. 
> Not ask for more foreign aid money than what Congress was initially wanting to give out.
> Said he would end the Department of Energy and didn't.
> Said the same thing about the Dept of Education and that departments budget more than doubled.
> 
> Reagan keeping Volcker was a good move


The doubled the Department of Education was a talking point related to W. bush not Reagan.

Foreign aid makes up zero percent of the budget. 

The Department of Energy oversees the nuclear arsenal. Worth noting Reagan the peace president negotiated the mutual disarmament of nukes with the Soviets that remains in effect today.

He vetoed numerous spending bills and spending as a share of gdp was lower when he left office than when he took office.

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## tebowlives

> The doubled the Department of Education was a talking point related to W. bush not Reagan.


I rechecked. It was closer to 40% 14.1 bil to 19.5 bil in 1987




> Foreign aid makes up zero percent of the budget.


It is the tax payers money. it's being spent.




> The Department of Energy oversees the nuclear arsenal. Worth noting Reagan the peace president negotiated the mutual disarmament of nukes with the Soviets that remains in effect today.


So who did it before 1977? It couldn't have been done without the D of Energy?




> He vetoed numerous spending bills and spending as a share of gdp was lower when he left office than when he took office.


 _"federal spending as percent of GNP in 1980 as 21.6%, and after six years of Reagan, 24.3%. A better comparison would be percentage of federal spending to net private product, that is, production of the private sector. That percentage was 31.1% in 1980, and a shocking 34.3% in 1986"
_https://mises.org/library/reagan-fraud-and-after

Public debt went from 25 to 41% from 1980-88


He added 250,000 new civilian government employees,

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## oyarde

> I'm pretty sure Wilson,LBJ, Obama, and Biden are all worst than Reagan.


By a landslide .

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## Firestarter

> The following article argues that Bill Barr is the “deep state fixer” Donald Trump found to take the place of Roy Cohn (an even more impressive cover-up artist than Robert Mueller or John Kerry?)…
> It contains references to some of the interesting books that I’ve posted about before.
> 
> When George Bush Sr. became Director of the CIA in 1976, William Barr was already in the CIA’s legal office.
> Bush promptly brought back assassinations manager Theodore Shackley along with Shackley’s deputy Thomas Clines. Men like Felix Rodriguez had served under Shackley as he ran the opium-growing projects in Laos and the Operation Phoenix mass murder project in Vietnam
> 
> William Barr joined helped Bush to stonewall the congressional investigation into the CIA following Watergate, led by Sen. Frank Church and Rep. Otis Pike. On George Bush’s recommendation, in 1977 Barr was hired as clerk to Federal Circuit Court Judge Malcolm Wilkey.
> 
> See from right President Ronald Reagan, William P. Barr, and Attorney General Edwin Meese, at the White House, 1983.


Drugs-profits-for-Oil-wars#post6914364

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## Perdineado

I don't think you can choose the worst or the best, but you can analyze the activity. And this is not an indicator

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