The gift that keeps on giving (unfortunately)

All this nonsensical Reagan worship the Reich wing and the Republican Presidential candidate are doing is really burning my ass lately. What they are trying to do is to re-write history to fit their own twisted agenda.

Reagan was a mediocre President who benefited from being in the right place at the right time. The USSR was going to collapse under it's own weight regardless of whether he stood in front of the Berlin wall and told Gorby to tear it down or not. The economy was going to pick up whether he cut taxes on the rich or not, in fact we spent much of the Reagan years mired in recession.


Let's take an honest look at some of his accomplishments:
1) He callously avoided mentioning or doing anything about AIDS until it became clear that it was going to spread beyond gay men.
2) He did nothing to empower or to help people of color.
3) He went on a military spending spree that nearly bankrupted this country.
4) He stood behind every right wing terrorist group that tried to over throw a legally elected government, cases in point his support of the Contras in Nicaragua and the death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador.
5) He attacked a tiny tropical island nation, Grenada, because it had a few Communists in it's government.

But the worst thing Reagan did was deregulation. He deregulated every thing he could get his hands on in the name of freeing up American business so it could compete better world wide. He stopped tougher mileage standards from being adopted, he defanged OHSA and MSHA, and he helped get many more regulations and worker safeguards repealed or stopped when he was President.

We are still reeling from the after effects of his bullshit lo these many years hence. Do you honestly think our climate would be in such trouble today if he had not allowed business and industry to pollute more? Do you honestly think that we'd have such a huge stock pile of weapons if he had not kept crying about how "weak" we were? Do think the culture of corruption in Washington DC wold be so high if he had not allowed his business cronies to run things and write our nations laws?

Some of the results of Reagans "freeing up" of American business have resulted in that mine disaster in Utah, the lead paint coated kiddie toys, a Wal-Mart on every corner, that Starbucks they're getting ready to open inside your colon, and the insanity that things in nature can be patented by a multi national corporation.

Imagine for a moment how many fewer deaths from AIDS we'd have to today if he'd put the power of the federal government to work on finding a cure. Imagine how much safer we would really be today if he had stopped propping up dictators and regimes who kill and torture their citizens.


While you're imagining that, just remember that if Reagan had not set the example of corrupt Reich wing cronyism then we might not be saddled with this asshole today.