This is all they've got:

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Greedy Republican Bastards, humor, Ronald Reagan, taxes

We are already starting to see what happens when a political party is hijacked by people who are crazy AND stupid (NYT link):

Even though many on Wall Street believe that a default remains unlikely, the financial markets are starting to become agitated. Volatility in stocks has soared, and some investors say stock prices are falling because a United States default could severely raise companies’ costs of doing business.

In the Treasury market, investors are starting to sell, fearing that the government will not make good on some interest payments that will be due next month. And complex financial instruments that will pay out if the United States defaults have become twice as expensive to buy as they were at the start of the year.

Analysts say the signs of panic are small for now.

“The metaphor is a pile of sand,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “You keep putting one piece of sand on the pile, nothing happens, and then, all of the sudden it just caves.”

Several traders and bankers, including Mr. Zandi, said the imminence of a possible default was already damaging the United States’ standing as the most creditworthy country in the world. The tarnished reputation may linger, even if the government reaches a deal, and especially if the country’s financial books remain unbalanced.

“Our aura is diminished. You know people really view the U.S. as the AAA, the gold standard, and I think we’re tarnishing that,” Mr. Zandi said.

The government began preparing for much tougher borrowing conditions in the years since the financial crisis, shifting toward issuing longer-term debt. This was especially needed because much of the debt issued to cover the financial crisis of 2008 was short-term debt.

The United States still enjoys low borrowing costs — below 3 percent on a 10-year-note — but there is fear that the theatrics around the current debate will increase those costs. Low national borrowing costs translate into lower borrowing costs for American corporations and individuals.

You'd think the crazies that have hijacked the Republican party would listen to their deity, Ronald Reagan:

These reactionaries who control the Republican Party now like to talk about how the Federal budget is just like a household one. But when someone running a household finds himself $20,000 in credit card debt, he doesn't stop paying the mortgage and tell his child who has cystic fibrosis that he can't afford her treatment anymore and tell his boss he can't come to work because he can't buy gasoline and instead has to send all that money to Capital One so that he can pay off $25,000 by the end of next month. What he does is cut out luxuries -- the lattes he buys on his way to work, his gym membership, the weekly dinners at Enzo's Casa La Expensive. He decides what he really needs and comes up with a plan to pay off his debt over the long haul. And he considers taking a second job on weekends or setting up a small business to bring in some extra money. Perhaps his wife decides that now that the sick child seems to be doing OK, she can go back to work. Because if it's important to him to pay off that debt, he's going to go at it from both the spending and the revenue side.

But for today's Republicans, it all has to be from the spending side. And it all has to be taken from the elderly and the poor, which is like the fictional guy I cited above deciding that he has to pay off his debt by stopping his child's treatments and medications because he simply can't wake up without a Starbuck's venti latte with an extra shot of espresso every morning and working out at home is for wusses.

Yesterday I posted about freshman Republicans who are still bringing home the bacon to their home states because one state's pork is another state's vital project. They refuse to cut their own projects. They refuse to cut the military, despite the trillions being spent on two pointless wars and military actions that always threaten to become a third. They refuse to ask the population equivalent of the guy for whom a thermos of coffee from home isn't good enough because he's rather sacrifice his kid's lifesaving meds than give up his Starbuck's to do without the latte and kick in a few more pennies. If this country is like a household, and it's like the family I created for illustration purposes, then the Republicans and their rich donors are like the father in this fictional family if his attitude were "If the kid dies, she dies. She costs me too much money anyway. And oh, Mom? We can't afford to have you live here anymore. Your stuff will be out by the curb tomorrow."

Labels: brinksmanship, economic death watch, Greedy Republican Bastards, Ronald Reagan

For the most part I've been able to avoid much of the Holiday That Has Supplanted Even Christmas in the minds of the American right, and that is the birthday of Saint Ronnie of Jesus. Our very own jurassicpork brought up a very nice hairball on that front the other day, and there's not much that I can add to that. And while I enjoy watching people who never met Ronald Reagan insist that they know him far better than the pleasant liberal man who, like, actually GREW UP IN THE SAME HOUSE WHERE SAINT RONNIE LIVED as much as the next cynic, there's just too much of Today wrapped up in the paeans to Yesterday, and too much of the aging high school mean girl that is Sarah Palin insisting that Ronnie the Great's leadeship was just like hers -- sniping about others without accomplishing much of anything oneself, or even having a plan after high school when the looks start to go, to pay much attention.

But one of our favorite, if more famous than we are (though he links to B@B even though he's somewhat of an A-lister) bloggers, the always hilarious TBogg, led us to this little gem of Ronniephilia from Idiot Son of an Asshole Ben Quayle:

When I was a child, President Ronald Reagan was the nice man who gave us jelly beans when we visited the White House.

I didn’t know then, but I know it now: The jelly beans were much more than a sweet treat that he gave out as gifts. They represented the uniqueness and greatness of America — each one different and special in its own way, but collectively they blended in harmony.

[snip]

Happy birthday, Mr. President. We will strive to continue your vision and keep our shining city on the hill as bright as you envisioned.

What most people didn't realize then, and still don't realize, is that the shining city on the hill was a gated community of mansions into which only the wealthiest Americans were allowed. And you can rely on Ben Quayle to work his damnedest to keep it that way.

And I'd be willing to wager that Ben always threw away the black jelly beans -- if they weren't all thrown away before the jar was even allowed into St. Ronnie's office.

Labels: American Idiots, Ronald Reagan, wingnuttia

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

Ronald Reagan must be the nicest president who ever destroyed a union, tried to cut school lunch milk rations from six to four ounces, and compelled families in need of public help to first dispose of household goods in excess of $1,000...1f there is an authoritarian regime in the American future, Ronald Reagan is tailored to the image of a friendly fascist. - Robert Lekachman

About the only true good thing that could be said about Ronald Reagan was that he'd retired from the most stressful job in the world with a full head of hair and he didn't do the damage he could've on account of all the naps he took.

Today is Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday and his fascistic followers are celebrating the day with all the pomp, circumstance and money-grubbing alacrity as unabashed fascists celebrate April 20th. You go to any bookstore, there will be the obligatory retrospective hagiographies commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth courtesy of our nation's most premier wingnuts and publishing houses. As with everything else, it's a great opportunity to make money and young college Republicans can now learn through his official biographers how Saint Ronnie of the Jelly Bean nearly completely destroyed middle class families like theirs.

To put it simply, as far as full term presidents go, Ronald Reagan is absolutely the worst, most destructive and dishonest president (George W. Bush would get that top honor if he was actually elected) this republic has ever produced. Under Reagan, the deficit tripled, national defense spending increased, he got a massive wave of tax breaks designed primarily to benefit his wealthy campaign contributors, public education took a rogering, he tried unsuccessfully to take food and milk out of our childrens' mouths at the same time he was giving tax breaks to corporations, more soldiers than ever died for his foreign policy adventurism, he was a coward and cut and ran when terrorists killed 241 of our Marines in Beirut, he cut back room deals with the contras under the fictional guise of combating the Commies, funneled money to them through arms sales to Iran and before he was even elected, sent envoys to talk to Iranian officials and illegally meddling with the hostage crisis under Carter (the all-but-discredited October Surprise which is making a comeback).

In late 1983, he sent another special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld (about to be anointed by CPAC with the Defender of the Constitution Award), to sell Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction and satellite photos of the Iranian army's encampments, thereby resulting in the murders of thousands of Iranians (and Kurdish and Shi'ite Iraqis). But earlier, he made it up to the Iranians by immediately lifting an arms sales ban and brokered a sale of weapons by ex-Mossad gun runners. He flexed his muscles on the beach while in reality doing nothing more than watching the surf crumble the sand castle of Communism then took credit for kicking it down. He overthrew another left wing government under Maurice Bishop by invading Grenada. His "supply side economics" was the forerunner of the unbridled and unchecked greed and capitalism that served as the successful template of the nightmare that ensued under Bush II.

That's just a partial laundry list of what a galactic-class scumbag Ronald Reagan was, a man who demonized the victims of his economic policies and dredged up stereotypes of the welfare queen, used dog whistle politics for racists by announcing his candidacy in a city in which three civil rights workers were murdered just 16 years earlier and smashed one union after another. He stole Jimmy Carter's playbook during that same campaign. His axe man, future jailbird David Stockman, immediately targeted the poor and sickly, immediately eliminating government-subsidized job training such as CETA (resulting in 300,000 suddenly unemployed federal workers) that still hasn't made a comeback. (I guess Reagan took the government underwriting training designed to make people more employable to be the "meddling" that he'd warned us about.)

He not only coddled and protected Noriega, but he even put him on the CIA's payroll and turned a blind eye when Nicaraguan drugs were making their way onto America's streets while having the nerve to appoint an ineffectual "Drug Czar" and his equally clueless wife was saying, "Just Say No!". He coddled and protected Pinochet in Chile until Pinochet's hideous excesses were too much even for Reagan to tolerate (.pdf file). But the ends justified the means because they were our staunch allies in the war on terrorism the dying Communists. He mentioned the word AIDS only once, in 1985, and otherwise pretended the pandemic didn't exist.

And through it all, the Teflon President sailed, smiled and waved through all these scandals like some befuddled old duffer unaware of his family's murderous, chaotic greed and ambition swirling around him. In point of fact, the man's evil was so systemic and so far-flung that we still haven't cataloged what a truly evil man he really was.

Kind of like the guy we have in the Oval Office now. As with Reagan before him, Obama puts a fresh face on fascism, the man who pats you on the back and tells you everything will be alright while his TSA, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security and God only knows how many other government goons are frisking the rest of your body. Both men have other things in common, including the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression (Reagan still outshines Obama, as the unemployment rate in 1983 peaked at a whopping 10.2%.) But Obama, friendly fascist though he is, had also had a lot of mud unfairly flung at him and much of it sticks.

He's a Socialist, a Muslim, a fraud who was born in Kenya. He pals around with terrorists. He's bound and determined to hand over 1/6th of our economy into the grasping hands of Big Gubmint. He didn't put his hand over his heart. He's not wearing his flag lapel pin. He disrespected the Office of the Presidency by not wearing his jacket. He muffed a Bible verse. He wants to impose Sharia law on the United States.


And he's a smoker.

All bullshit.

Yet nothing, certainly not the truth, stuck to Reagan thanks to those slick, tailored suits and an endless supply of Brylcreem. He represented to many ignorant people, well-meaning folks and fascists-in-waiting a return to the good old days when he actually had a career in acting, a return to a glorious America somewhere between 40 acres and a mule and Jimmy Carter's sweaters, as if we could actually get that dusty, dog-eared 1955 calendar out of the attic and begin reusing it.

How soon we forgot that those good old days, let's say the 50's, were ones in which, under Eisenhower, the wealthiest paid 90% in taxes, that Reagan was a liberal Democrat who headed up a large union called the Screen Actor's Guild. How fast we chose to forget that by 1962 Reagan had turned from a so-called Democrat to a staunch, union-busting Republican, that he would follow in the footsteps of not Dwight D. Eisenhower but Joe McCarthy. In fact, Reagan's example had not only gone uncriticized, it even spawned a still-famous movement involving petty turncoats who were dubbed "Reagan Democrats." (They've since awakened from their slumber and have switched back.)

12 years of policies ranging from the ruinous to the neglectful ensued and once St. Ronnie was out of office, we all suddenly blinked and rubbed our eyes and wondered where the devastation came from. By 1992, three years after Reagan stumbled back to his California ranch and beginning 12 more years of mistaking his tapioca for hair tonic, 48% of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of Reagan. Less than a quarter of those polled said we were better off, a bitter counterpoint to Reagan's campaign mantra of, "Can you say you're better off now than you were four years ago?"

But 1992 was almost a generation ago and now The Gipper is making a comeback like another dictator is in his own country.

Yet, in case all this hasn't made an impression on you, let's take a look at the real "Dutch" Reagan, who wasn't really Dutch anymore than he was The Gipper, in this video that was secretly taped at the Oval Office.


Yeah, that about gets it right.

So, here's my idea. In lieu of a minute of silence, let's have a minute of piss while we're standing over or sitting on the toilet and think of Ronald Reagan's grave.

Labels: Ronald Reagan

We've been huge fans of Mike Stark ever since he dared to brave George "Macaca" Allen's goons back in 2006. Then there's this...and this. And then there's the time that we were introduced to Mike at Yearly Kos in 2007 where I burbled fannish gibberish like a tween girl who's just realized she's in the same checkout line at Abercrombie and Fitch with Justin Bieber. Because no one is better at being a thorn in the side of Republicans than ol' Mr. Balls of Steel.

I heard this bit on Randi Rhodes' show while driving home this evening, and I should have known it was Stark on the phone:


I think that may be the first time Limbaugh was rendered very nearly speechless.

Labels: bloggers, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh

Danny Casolaro was an investigative journalist who was found dead in his bathtub in 1991. His death was ruled a suicide even though he had been receiving threatening phone calls in the days leading up to his death. Casolaro had been investigating what he called "The Octopus", a huge web of conspiracy which included the odd timing of the release of American hostages held in Iran minutes after Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981.

The Iran hostage crisis was arguably the kiss of death for the re-election prospects of Jimmy Carter. It's questionable whether a guy who had already had to get through an Arab oil embargo which resulted in long lines for gasoline, who talked about American "malaise", who dared to tell the truth, and who was putting solar panels on the White House decades before such things were even in the public consciousness, could have been re-elected anyway. But what Casolaro was investigating would have demonstrated a campaign doing back-door deals with enemy governments for political gain.

This was just part of what Casolaro was investigating, and no one with a brain actually buys the story that Casolaro would have committed suicide just when he was on the brink of a story that would blow the Reagan years wide open. But for the most part, Casolaro is now either forgotten, or regarded as a conspiracy kook, with some justification, largely because of his gullibility when dealing with associates of Lyndon LaRouche in the Inslaw case.

But even a conspiracy kook gets to glimmers of truth sometimes, and it appears that at least where the arms-for-hostages deal is concerned, he was right:

In other words, the Russian report – possibly representing Moscow’s first post-Cold War collaboration with the United States on an intelligence mystery – was not only kept from the American public but apparently from the chairman of the task force responsible for the investigation.

The revelation further suggests that the congressional investigation was shoddy and incomplete, thus reopening the question of whether Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980 was, in part, set in motion by a dirty trick that extended the 444-day captivity of the hostages who were freed immediately after Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981.

The coincidence between Reagan’s inauguration and the hostage release was curious to some but served mostly to establish in the minds of Americans that Reagan was a tough leader who instilled fear in U.S. adversaries. However, if the timing actually resulted from a clandestine arms-for-hostage deal, it would mean that Reagan’s presidency began with an act of deception, as well as an act of treachery.

The Russian report also implicates other prominent Republicans in the Iranian contacts, including the late William Casey (who was Reagan’s campaign director in 1980), George H.W. Bush (who was Reagan’s vice presidential running mate), and Robert Gates (who in 1980 had been a CIA officer on the National Security Council before becoming executive assistant to Carter’s CIA Director Stansfield Turner).

Casey, who served as Reagan’s first CIA director, died in 1987 before the 1980 allegations came under scrutiny. Bush, who was President during the task force’s 1992 inquiry, angrily denied the accusations at two news conferences but was never questioned under oath. Gates, who was CIA director in 1992 and is now President Barack Obama's Defense Secretary, also has brushed off the suspicions.

As described by the Russians, the 1980 hostage negotiations boiled down to a competition between the Carter administration and the Reagan campaign offering the Iranians different deals if the hostages were either released before the election to help Carter or held until after the election to benefit Reagan.

The Iranians “discussed a possible step-by-step normalization of Iranian-American relations [and] the provision of support for President Carter in the election campaign via the release of American hostages,” according to the U.S. Embassy’s classified translation of the Russian report.

Meanwhile, the Republicans were making their own overtures, the Russian report said. “William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership,” the report said. “The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris.”

At the Paris meeting in October 1980, “R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George Bush also took part,” the Russian report said. “In Madrid and Paris, the representatives of Ronald Reagan and the Iranian leadership discussed the question of possibly delaying the release of 52 hostages from the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran.”

Both the Reagan-Bush Republicans and the Carter Democrats “started from the proposition that Imam Khomeini, having announced a policy of ‘neither the West nor the East,’ and cursing the ‘American devil,’ imperialism and Zionism, was forced to acquire American weapons, spares and military supplies by any and all possible means,” the Russian report said.

According to the Russians, the Republicans won the bidding war. “After the victory of R. Reagan in the election, in early 1981, a secret agreement was reached in London in accord with which Iran released the American hostages, and the U.S. continued to supply arms, spares and military supplies for the Iranian army,” the Russian report continued.

The deliveries were carried out by Israel, often through private arms dealers, the Russian report said. [For text of the Russian report, click here. To view the U.S. embassy cable that contains the Russian report, click here.]

The Russian report came in response to an Oct. 21, 1992, query from Hamilton, who asked the Russian government what its files might show about the October Surprise case. The report came back from Sergey V. Stepashin, chairman of the Supreme Soviet’s Committee on Defense and Security Issues, a job roughly equivalent to chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In what might have been an unprecedented act of cooperation between the two longtime enemies, Stepashin provided a summary of what Russian intelligence files showed about the October Surprise charges and other secret U.S. dealings with Iran.

In the 1980s, after all, the Soviet KGB was not without its own sources on a topic as important to Moscow as developments in neighboring Iran. The KGB had penetrated or maintained close relations with many of the intelligence services linked to the October Surprise allegations, including those of France, Spain, Germany, Iran and Israel.

Ronald Reagan is regarded by Republicans as a founding father of their modern movement. Every Republican seems to be required to swear an oath of fealty to Ronald Reagan. When you look at how Republicans are embracing overthrow-the-government teabaggers these days, and you realize that Reagan's victory in 1980 was at least partially due to an act of treason, it all fits together as to what Republicans stand for -- the grabbing of power by any means necessary.

Labels: Iran, October Surprise, Ronald Reagan

Those who worship Ronald Reagan seem to have forgotten that he was not a particularly religious man. Like most wingnuts (and Reagan seems downright moderate compared to what passes for conservatism today), Reagan gave a lot of lip service to religion and tossed a lot of red meat to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, but he was not a particularly religious man.

But a new book, nauseatingly titled Hand of Providence: The Strong and Quiet Faith of Ronald Reagan, would lead us to believe that just because one's children think that a seemingly unlikely recovery from an assassination attempt is the result of angels doesn't mean it is:

According to a WorldNetDaily review a new book, Hand of Providence: The Strong and Quiet Faith of Ronald Reagan, by Mary Beth Brown it appears that the next move is sainthood. The book claims that angels were sent by God twice to save Reagan’s life so that he could save his country. According to the report:

Reagan's children believe those mysterious nurses that helped pull their father through this life-threatening ordeal were angels.

"Patty believes they were angels, and so do I," said Michael Reagan, who wrote the foreword to "Hand of Providence."

A central tenet of mythmaking is to make assertions that cannot be disproved. While Carter was a devout Christian believer, Reagan was never considered anything more than what fundamentalists normally deride as merely religious. The book highlights two Reagan “fever-dreams” during an illness as a young man and after the assassination attempt in 1981 where Reagan confused his caregivers with angels. Sadly, Reagan was known for conflating his movie roles with real life experiences so it may be that his role in “Angels Wash Their Faces” with the Dead End Kids may have been literally true in his mind.

One of the more interesting aspects of Ronald Reagan's legacy is the split down the middle of his children. His daughter with Jane Wyman, the late Maureen and the adopted Michael, became staunch conservatives. Maureen was more of a mainstream Republican, while Michael has made a career in right wing Hate Radio spouting the kind of crap that makes guys like James Von Brunn decide to shoot a black security guard at the Holocaust museum. Reagan's children with Nancy fall on the other side of the spectrum, with Ronald Jr. hosting a surprisingly droll and entertaining show on Air America Radio, and Patti Davis, who was never known by her father's name and was estranged from her father for many years, has long supported liberal causes.

But when a Reagan-worshipper decides to write a book that elevates the guy who played The Gipper in a movie to deity status, the complexity of the Reagan childrens' relationship can be used to bolster a religio-political point, rather than a moment of reconcilation in coming together in the face of a family crisis.

It's hardly surprising that a book would ocme out now once again extolling the virtues of Ronald Reagan. Many people alive today don't even remember the man, and when you look at what conservatism has become -- hate delivered by the barrel of a gun -- it's hardly surprising that some would try to find their way back there.

Labels: Ronald Reagan, wingnuttia

Somehow I expect that if by some miracle we have a Democratic president who somehow manages to implement policies that start extricating us from the economic mess that the Bush Administration is leaving us, conservatives will say it's because of policies Ronald Reagan implemented. Because before George W. Bush was worshipped as a god by hard-core conservatives, it was Saint Ronnie. Republicans have been searching for their new Ronald Reagan ever since George Herbert Walker Bush proved a bit honking dud as a campaigner, expressing astonishment at a supermarket scanner and saying to middle class Americans about whom he really didn't give a damn except to the extent that they might keep him in power, "Message: I care."

To the extent that Ronald Reagan is to be admired, it's as a highly effective snake oil salesman, convincing middle class people that if you shovel enough cash into the pockets of the wealthy, the change that trickles out of their overflowing pockets will enrich the middle class as well. Reagan also fed into the deep-seated emotional need that conservatives have for a father figure, though in those waning days of the Cold War, nutually assured destruction seemed a remote prospect at most. Reagan was the affable daddy, the one who'd keep the bogeyman (welfare queens) away from you but still go out in the backyard and have a catch. In this year's Search for the New Reagan, the Republican candidates are running as the punitive, controlling daddy; as Robert DeNiro in This Boy's Life or Robert Duvall as The Great Santini.

That Charlie Wilson's War turned out to be a dud at the box office is actually a positive sign that people outside those on the hard-core right with their daddy issues are re-evaluating the Reagan era. Whether it's that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are past their prime as box office draws, or if it's that people now understand that the events described in that particular story are what led to the creation of al-Qaeda remains to be seen. But it's clear now that the American role in putting the last nail in the Soviet expansionism coffin helped put us in the mess in which we find ourselves now.

It's in the area of economic policy where the current crop of Republicans persist in embracing the Reagan Doctrine, despite the fact that it was a Democratic president that had to clean up the mess that Reagan and Bush left in their "borrow and spend" policies. Today Paul Krugman sets the record straight on the Republicans' Reagan nostalgia in pointing out how there is absolutely no reason for any Democrat to invoke Ronald Reagan as an example for anything:

The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed — a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House.

Given that reality, what was Mr. Obama talking about? Some good things did eventually happen to the U.S. economy — but not on Reagan’s watch.

For example, I’m not sure what “dynamism” means, but if it means productivity growth, there wasn’t any resurgence in the Reagan years. Eventually productivity did take off — but even the Bush administration’s own Council of Economic Advisers dates the beginning of that takeoff to 1995.

Similarly, if a sense of entrepreneurship means having confidence in the talents of American business leaders, that didn’t happen in the 1980s, when all the business books seemed to have samurai warriors on their covers. Like productivity, American business prestige didn’t stage a comeback until the mid-1990s, when the U.S. began to reassert its technological and economic leadership.

I understand why conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend that these good things happened while a Republican was in office — or claim, implausibly, that the 1981 Reagan tax cut somehow deserves credit for positive economic developments that didn’t happen until 14 or more years had passed. (Does Richard Nixon get credit for “Morning in America”?)

But why would a self-proclaimed progressive say anything that lends credibility to this rewriting of history — particularly right now, when Reaganomics has just failed all over again?

Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich and promises that the benefits would trickle down to the middle class. Like Reagan, he also began his term with an economic slump, then claimed that the recovery from that slump proved the success of his policies.

And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. The public mood today is as grim as it was in 1992. Wages are lagging behind inflation. Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era. Even if we don’t have a formal recession — and the odds now are that we will — the optimism of the 1990s has evaporated.

This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have.

It’s not just a matter of what happens in the next election. Mr. Clinton won his elections, but — as Mr. Obama correctly pointed out — he didn’t change America’s trajectory the way Reagan did. Why?

Well, I’d say that the great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.

Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.

I would say that the reason the Clinton Administration didn't change the narrative had nothing to do with policy, and everything to do with the Clintonistas' underestimation of whom they were dealing with on the other side of the aisle, and Bill Clinton's inability to exercise the extra caution in his personal life that was required when the vultures are constantly circling.

Ronald Reagan ought to be the third rail of Democratic politics in that anything that smacks of praise of the Republicans' most cherished icon is to be strictly avoided. I have to wonder how much of Barack Obama's disappointing performance in Nevada was a result of him touching that third rail. It may be that he was trying to win the endorsement of the Reno newspaer that was conducting the interview, but ultimately none of the newspaper endorsements in the world will compensate if you don't get the support from voters who never, ever, want anything that smacks of Ronald Reagan running the country ever again.

Labels: 2008 election, Paul Krugman, Ronald Reagan

Have you ever seen a group of people with bigger Daddy issues than Republicans? As a group, they always seem to be looking for the strong, stern father figure who will not only make sure they don't succumb to their more animalistic impulses, but who will protect them from the monster under the bed. For all that Republicans talk the tough guy walk, their fascination for father figures shows that they are really just frightened little children.

There's psychological help available for this, if they would only avail themselves of it.

The symbol for the Ultimate Daddy Figure for these people is Ronald Reagan, the "I'm Not a President, But I Play One On TV" president. Ronald Reagan was George W. Bush in that he spent two terms playing a role, except that Reagan was better at it. Ironically, for someone who never had much credibility as an actor, Reagan finally found that One Good Role that can take the third banana and turn him into a star.

The Republican attempts since then to find "another Reagan" resemble nothing so much as Hollywood's recent attempts to find the Next Great Action Star. With Tom Cruise having decided to not just take his Scientology out of the closet, but wave it around like one of Liberace's old gold lamé jackets, the movie industry has resorted to dragging out the Geezers of Action Movies Past -- Sylvester Stallone reprises Rambo, the sixtysomething Harrison Ford reprising Harrison Ford Indiana Jones when Aaron Eckhart would do just as well, and cueball-headed Bruce Willis starring in "Die Hard: It's Time Already." What's next, Robert Redford and Paul Newman in "Butch and Sundance: Back to Bolivia"?

Is there an image that better encapsulates the Republican Need for Daddy than this?



Ten sixtyish white men in nearly identical navy suits and red power ties, lined up as if in the opening of the old game show To Tell the Truth, each one saying, "I'm Ronald Reagan." "No, I'm Ronald Reagan." "No, I'm Ronald Reagan." You couldn't get more Daddyish if you had put them all in Ozzie Nelson-style cardigan sweaters. And of course the Chief Reagan, that OTHER actor whom a desperate Republican party fearing that NONE of these clowns are the Second Coming, was nowhere in sight. That Republicans are so desperate to recapture the Magic of Ronnie that they're speaking in glowing terms of the "charisma" of the dour-faced Fred Thompson shows the depths to which this party has sunk in its primal need to bring Daddy back from the dead.

Michael Scherer in Salon:

Ten Republican men gathered on a stage Thursday night to pound their chests. Each of them looked tough. Each talked tough. Each tried to be the alpha dog, the real-deal decider, the next Ronald Reagan.

"Ronald Reagan was a president of strength," said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, looking tall, tan and strong. "His philosophy was a philosophy of strength: a strong military, a strong economy and strong families."

"We should never retreat in the face of terrorism," said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, with a prosecutor's voice and a gleaming forehead.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the current front-runner, came out like a chained dog, pointing at the camera to punctuate his points. "We will do whatever is necessary," he said of terrorist-at-large Osama bin Laden. "We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of hell."

It was hard to miss the point. Republicans have a different code than Democrats. Liberals elect leaders with finesse and style, men or women who can inspire, who can seek out the truth and lead the nation there. When the Democratic presidential candidates debated last week, the front-runners were modest and reasonable and calm. Republicans, on the other hand, elect father figures, men who will never flinch and will always lay down the law. The candidates came out swinging.

Eight years ago, President George W. Bush looked as though he would pass this test. But he turned out to be a ninny. He led the conservative movement into a period of decadence and decline. He revealed the limits of American power by sending the nation into a losing foreign war. So the Grand Old Party has reached back to the past, to Ronald Reagan, the great California cowboy who never sweated the details. The Republican primary has become, in many ways, a fatherhood audition. Only a man's man will save us.

Find someone as macho as Reagan, Giuliani suggested, and America's enemies will fold in fear. "He has to look at an American president and he has to see Ronald Reagan," Giuliani said of the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Remember, they looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes, and in two minutes, they released the hostages." Of course, that is not what happened in Iran in 1981. But it doesn't matter. Republicans believe in their guts that Reagan's swagger released the hostages, grew the economy, and won the Cold War.

It's always struck me as hilarious that Ronald Reagan, a man whose relationship with his own children was hardly something to emulate, is held up as the Daddy di tutti Daddies for Republicans. I mean, here's a guy whose two children by his second wife Nancy are hardly Republican Dream Children. And while Patti Davis and Ron Reagan Jr. have grown into some pretty cool adults as far as I'm concerned, I doubt that their life paths as they transitioned from adolescence to belated adulthood are exactly what Republicans have in mind.

The one thing you DO have to say about Patti and Ron is something you can't say about Republican voters in general: They've obviously gotten the help they needed to resolve their father issues and have moved on with their own lives.

Would that the Republican voters Desperately Seeking Daddy could bring themselves to do the same.

Labels: Republic Party, Ronald Reagan