For my untold millions of readers waiting breathlessly for my Reagan comments ...

At the time of Reagan's presidency, I disagreed with him on most issues and resented his phony-baloney persona and staged photo-op manner of conducting himself. (That last phrase is a misnomer as, in truth, he was conducted — primarily by Michael Deaver and his wife Nancy.)

They say ‘speak not ill of the dead,' which in this case will prove difficult, but I'll start by admitting that his "Tear down this wall" speech was perhaps the greatest presidential moment of post-WWII administrations, and did contribute, as did his stalwart actions, to the demise of the Soviet Union.

My paramount concern isn't the debate about the late President Reagan, but the current policies of the now President Bush, and how we should react to them. Perhaps the Reagan model can be useful in dissecting the anatomy of this president, especially considering that conservative partisans spent a full week spinning like crazy that GWB was the heir of RR, and cut from the same mold. This is a lot of (pardon my French) malarkey.

The only similarity — besides, OK, a basic simple-mindedness — is that they both cut taxes immediately upon attaining the White House. But Reagan, when shown the facts that his tax cuts were too much, and would overly burden the economy and cripple the next generation, raised income and payroll taxes. Pragmatically and responsibly.

Junior Bush, in practically the same circumstance, and with the knowledge that the U.S. was conducting war in Afghanistan, and about to conduct war (and occupation) in Iraq, pushed through even more tax cuts -- because that was the most important thing to his friends, family and rich/corporate clientele.

There are other compare and contrasts that can be done, and I'll plug those into this blog as we go along.




The upper middle class suburban population, which has quite a bit of clout politically, socially and economically, lives in a kind of fool's paradise, a pseudo-reality island of green lawns, sparkling malls, modern office buildings and pro-active schools. This is their world — and a good world it is, one that they deserve to enjoy — but they often (as in almost always) lose sight of the fact that, while they're living on their 30 square miles of well-kept civilization, not all that far from them is a city with 20 square miles of urban crime and grime, with vermin-infested housing, and crumbling schools.

What should they do about it? Well, that's hard to say, as the first step toward action has not even been taken, which is the acknowledgment that this problem — the deprivation, degradation and desperation of millions of fellow human souls — even exists as something of importance.




Take note, America. History is replete with the rise and fall of great nations who dominated the world, got rich and powerful, then fat and lazy and arrogant and decadent. Then were defeated by the next lean-and-hungry to come along.



I think that, after a heady few hundred years of freedom run rampant, that people in general are about to be re-coralled for the duration of human history by the forces of conservatism, repression and "order." (Hey, it was a good run, especially these past 50 years!)

If Bush/Ashcroft get re-elected, this curtailment will become an even quicker certainty. Plans underway at the Pentagon (under the aegis of that old gamester and anti-constitutionalist John Poindexter) will lead to a virtual repeal of the Fourth Amendment. Rebuffed earlier with a similar plan when news of it leaked out, these scary folks are back with a few similar plans with different names, including something called LifeLog which would catalog all Americans' credit card purchases, phone calls, e-mails and web-page visits into a giant database. (I don't think that "Kafkaesque" quite covers the legitimate paranoia this should engender.)

They even want the means to know what TV programs we all watch. (I kind of like this last idea, but only until we can determine who exactly is keeping Anna Nicole's TV career alive and beg them to stop.)