Capitol Hill Blue ignited a right-wing firestorm when it reported on 7-30-04 that Nancy Reagan "told the GOP she wants nothing to do with their upcoming national convention or the re-[s]election campaign of George W. Bush." Now the Busheviks are desperately trying to get Nancy to publicly support W. So far, they got a staffer in President Reagan's office [wait - isn't he dead? never mind!] to say Nancy is in "full and complete support of Bush's candidacy." But what is NANCY saying? She will NOT attend the GOP convention in NYC, and she has "no plans right now" to campaign for Bush. "She's taking it one day at a time right now. We'll see," Drake said. Yes, we WILL SEE, won't we? Action speak louder than words!

With his straight talk, Ron Reagan puts the Republicans to shame. "Q: How do you account for all the glowing obituaries of [Ronald Reagan]? RR: I think it was a relief for Americans to look at pictures of something besides men on leashes. If you are going to call yourself a Christian -- and I don't -- then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. Q. How did your mother feel about being ushered to her seat by President Bush? RR: Well, he did a better job than Dick Cheney did when he came to the rotunda. I felt so bad. Cheney brought my mother up to the casket, so she could pay her respects. She is in her 80's, and she has glaucoma and has trouble seeing. There were steps, and he left her there. He just stood there, letting her flounder. I don't think he's a mindful human being. That's probably the nicest way I can put it."

AP: "The gulf between public perceptions of Bush and Reagan is substantial. By a margin of 6-to-1 in a recent Associated Press poll, those surveyed said they thought Reagan would be remembered as a better president than Bush. The poll was conducted in mid-June, a week after Reagan's state funeral and a flurry of tributes to the former president. It also came shortly after Bush attended D-Day ceremonies in France with allied leaders and the Group of Eight summit in Georgia with various heads of state. About half of the public said they view Bush in a favorable light and approve of the job he's doing. More than eight in 10 viewed Reagan favorably, according to the AP poll conducted last week by Ipsos-Public Affairs."

"Ronald Reagan's family is criticizing the use of the late president's image in a conservative political ad endorsing President George W. Bush. The ad comparing Bush's war on terror with Reagan's battle against communism is being run by the conservative interest group Club for Growth starting Wednesday. It shows footage of Reagan at the Berlin Wall, and Bush at ground zero. The ad also said Democratic presidential contender John Kerry was 'wrong then, wrong now' on national security. A Reagan family spokeswoman said the group does not have permission to use Reagan's image in the ad because doing so implies his endorsement. Club for Growth said it wants to show how similar Bush and Reagan have been 'in terms of fighting evil.' A Kerry spokesman said it's 'pretty sad' that Bush supporters are already politicizing the nation's farewell to Reagan."

As Republicans try to cloak President Bush in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, their biggest obstacle may be Mr. Reagan's own family... Son Ron Reagan delivered a eulogy that castigated politicians who use religion "to gain political advantage," a comment that was being interpreted in Washington as a not-so-subtle slap at Mr. Bush... a friend of the Reagan family said Mr. Reagan was deeply uncomfortable with the way the Bush administration intertwined religion and politics and felt compelled to say so at the burial of his father.

Tim Wise writes: "What white folks ignore, but what most black folks can never forget, is how Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act at the time of its passage... and never repudiated his former stand. Or that as Governor of California, Reagan dismissed the struggle for fair and open housing, by saying that blacks were just "making trouble" and had no intention of moving into mostly white neighborhoods.Perhaps they have a hard time forgetting that of all the places Reagan could have begun his campaign for the Presidency in 1980, he had to choose Philadelphia, Mississippi: a town famous only for the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers. And perhaps they recall that the focus of his speech that day was "state's rights," a longstanding white code for rolling back civil rights gains and longing for the days of segregation."

Martha Burk writes, "Reagan began his assault on women even before he was elected. The Republicans had been the first major party to champion constitutional equality for women, putting the Equal Rights Amendment in their platform in 1940. Ronnie ended that. At his bidding, the ERA disappeared from the GOP platform at the 1980 convention that nominated him to be the party's standard-bearer. At the same time, Reagan backed a Human Life Amendment that would ban abortion and even some types of birth control. When most people think about Ronald Reagan and women, it will be this anti-abortion stance that will come to mind first. For many, his name is infamously twinned with the 1984 'Mexico City Policy,' which dried up money for international family planning. But many more policies harmed women that were either 'under the radar' or not obviously connected to women in the eyes of most Americans."

Lila Garrett writes, "I watched while two sleepy little children, about 6 and 4, trying to keep their eyes open, sat dutifully waiting to go in and look at the flag covered coffin. Their parents had obviously told them a great man was in there. I wondered how much those children knew about that great man. Did they know the great man in the box had cut federal spending for schools to almost nothing when he was President. One of his first cuts was school lunches - which some kids used as their only meal of the day. Children were suddenly allowed only two vegetables, and it was the great man in the box who declared that ketchup counted as one of them. All that lunch money he saved went into the defense budget, which he tripled."

Here is a remarkably powerful statement from Ron Reagan Jr. "Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference."

IPS reports, "In 1984 Tariq Aziz, now under arrest after being on the list of Iraqis most wanted by the U.S. administration, travelled to Washington and met Ronald Reagan at the White House. Following that meeting, the United States made its intelligence in the Gulf available to Iraq on a regular basis, and set up direct links between the CIA and the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Through this time the Reagan administration largely ignored reports that Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons against the Iranian army and against domestic Kurdish insurgents... Iraqi Brigadier-General Zekki Daoud Jabber says the Reagan administration never seriously tried to stop Iraq using chemical weapons. 'Everything we did was checked with America,' he said. 'They knew our policy was to use chemical weapons on the Iranian army when they entered our territory. We told them that and they continued to help us.'"

Mark Lunt writes: "In both Reagan-Bush administrations, military spending like a cancer devoured our resources while schools fell apart, millions of Americans lacked access to health care, good jobs vanished, the rich got richer and budget deficits spiraled out of control. [Reagan's "reign" also marked the end of affordable housing]. Suspicion still lingers about the Reagan-Bush campaign's dealings with the Iranians then holding U.S. hostages prior to the election in 1980. It is not unreasonable to believe there was a sinister symmetry to the hostages being released on Inauguration Day. In Central America, the Reagan-Bush administrations created and supported brutal dictators and death squads. To describe the Iran-Contra events as a scandal is something of an understatement. What Reagan and Bush did was no less than subvert democracy setting up a shadow government hidden from Congress and the American people. It was accountable to nobody and misappropriated taxpayer money. "

...Third, this legislation would either pass fast or it would become a matter of contention. Either result helps President Bush... Fourth, any hint of hating Ronald Reagan now may cripple Democrats in two indispensable states, California and Illinois...Fifth, the legislation to put President Reagan on Mount Rushmore would splinter Democrats badly.....Suppose Kerry voted for the legislation. How many Leftists would vote for Nader or stay home on election day? How many Leftists would take pot shots at Kerry? If he voted for it, then he would either be expressing a sincere reverence for Reagan or he would be showing political cowardice under fire. Both look very bad for him in the election. Reagan: another wedge issue for the Repugs.

In an exclusive interview with Pravda this week, Greg Palast spoke out on Reagan's 'Evil Empire': "You need an enemy. In order to continue a regime of brutality and lying, you need to have a threat and it's even better if that threat is non-existent. In Reagan's case he built upon an established fear of communism, but it is absolute nonsense that he drove the Soviet Union into the ground and "won" the Cold War by outspending them on armaments. People are writing that to this day and it is complete crap-ola. The truth is America is lost without an enemy... The terror attack enabled this administration to find the "Axis of Evil" but they aren"t going to go after the real source of the attacks, the oil sheiks, because that"s where the money is. With this administration it"s a matter of principal up to a point, once they get to the money then principal doesn"t matter."

Those of us who watched the Reagan funeral can report: It was a staggeringly overpriced tribute to white conservative America. Nearly everyone present at the National Cathedral service - including every single speaker and (from what we saw) all but one children's choir member - was white. There was also an undertone of religious bigotry: even with the new president of Iraq present, no Muslim clergyman was asked to speak, even though a Jewish Rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a Protestant minister spoke. And at the close of the service, the presiding clergyman invoked the audience to "Go with Christ." The cost of the funeral to the American people, including security, pomp, and lost revenue was $429 million - that's pushing ONE HALF BILLION dollars.

The GOP and their media cohorts are gushing in nauseating fashion this week about the legendary popularity of Ronald Reagan. Legendary is right: it never existed - not on the scale they want the world to swallow. According to polls taken DURING his presidency (as opposed to euphoric recall): "During his first two years, Reagan's approval ratings were quite low. His 52% average approval rating for his presidency places him 6th out of the past 10 presidents, behind Kennedy (70%), Eisenhower (66%), George H.W. Bush (61%t), Clinton (55%), and Johnson (55%). His popularity frequently dipped below 50%t during his first term, plummeted to 46% during the Iran-Contra scandal, and never exceeded 68%. By contrast, Clinton's maximum approval rating hit 71%" As to that mythic "likeability" -- in polls, Reagan's "likeability" numbers were no better than other modern presidents, including Jimmy Carter.

Reagan's mythic 'likeability' and 'popularity' were manufactured and packaged by the corporate political machine in Washington, then sold to the public after the fact by a willing accomplice: the media. This article from 1989 exposes this myth - the same myth the media is pushing full-steam this week.FAIR: "Even the notion that the American public likes Ronald Reagan the man has been grossly exaggerated." While Reagan's numbers always hovered in the 70s," 84% of Americans liked Ike in February 1956. In August 1964, 89% of Americans liked Johnson. Even in the summer months of Carter's final, unpopular year as president (just before his defeat by Reagan in the 1980 election), Carter scored a higher Gallup personal likeability index at 76% than Reagan's 73% during the comparable period of his Administration." In short, Reagan was one of the most UNPOPULAR presidents of the past 50 years!

Sid Blumenthal writes, "Ronald Reagan's presidency collapsed at the precise moment on Nov. 25, 1986, when he suddenly appeared without notice in the White House briefing room, introduced his attorney general, Edwin Meese, and instantly departed from the stage. Meese announced that funds raised by members of the National Security Council and others by selling arms to Iran had been used to aid the Nicaraguan Contras. Anti-terrorism laws and congressional resolutions had been willfully violated; eventually 11 people were convicted of felonies. In less than a week, Reagan's popularity plunged from 67 percent to 46 percent, the greatest and quickest decline ever for a president. On Dec. 17, 1986, the day William Casey, the mumbling director of the CIA, was scheduled to testify on the Iran-Contra scandal before the Senate Intelligence Committee, he collapsed into a coma, suffering from brain cancer, never to recover."

"Providing security for former President Reagan's funeral is likely to cost government agencies several million dollars, but a far bigger expense is the loss of a day's labor by most of the federal government's 1.8 million employees. Under an executive order signed by President Bush, all federal workers except those needed to provide law enforcement, national security and other essential services are taking Friday off as part of a national day of mourning. The Office of Personnel Management said Wednesday that a day's payroll expense for the entire federal workforce is $423 million" - that's nearly half a BILLION dollars, folks!

"The lesson the Republicans in power today took from the Reagan experience was that they could disregard deficits. Bush's first treasury secretary, Paul H. O'Neill, reported in his book, 'The Price of Loyalty,' that at a crucial budget meeting, Dick Cheney brushed off a question about the deficit by saying, 'Reagan proved deficits don't matter.'... Another lesson the current administration took from the Reagan years is that it can be politically advantageous to publish budgets with numbers that are less than fully honest... The budgets prepared by David A. Stockman, Mr. Reagan's first budget director, adopted what was called a 'rosy scenario' - impossibly optimistic predictions about future growth, inflation and interest rates. They also included what was called the 'magic asterisk' - a gimmick that allowed for the budgeting of unspecified, and never intended, spending cuts."

Brian Morton writes: "Ronald Reagan came to office with his now-legendary sunny optimism, but he also brought with him something else: the beginnings of the end of civility in modern politics. It was Reagan who began the trend of making 'liberal' a bad word. And it was Reagan who created the now-snowballing legacy of the freeloader culture: Taxes can always be cut, government can always can be shrunk, and there's never any need to worry about who pays the bills--someone will take care of that later. Sadder still, Reagan turned a deaf ear to the scourge of AIDS. Some reports show that as many as 60,000 people died between the discovery of the disease in 1981 and when Reagan first made public mention of it in 1987. In the president's authorized biography by Edmund Morris, 1999's Dutch, Reagan suggests, 'Maybe the Lord brought down this plague' on gays because 'illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."

"To Congress, the Republican Party, and the Conservative Movement: We, the American taxpayers, are outraged by your efforts to put Ronald Reagan's name and face on airports, government buildings, national monuments, and coins and bills. There is only one appropriate monument to Ronald Reagan: the national debt. When Reagan came to office in 1981, the debt accumulated since the founding of the U.S. was $1 trillion. When he left 8 years later, he tripled the debt to $3 trillion. This was the inevitable result of massively cutting taxes for the rich and increasing defense spending for weapons we couldn't use. Even George H. W. Bush saw through it, calling it 'Voodoo Economics.' America's national debt is a crushing burden that Reagan passed on to those of us paying taxes today, and those who will pay taxes for generations to come. To properly remember this monumental betrayal of America, we urge you to declare our national debt as the 'Reagan Memorial Debt.'" Sign the petition!

The Bush battle cry to promote the war in Iraq was "he used chemical weapons on his own people!" Yet the Reagan administration not only knew of and covered up this crime, but opened up full diplomatic relations with Saddam seven months AFTER the UN revealed the chemical attack. AFP: " 'We have recently received additional information confirming Iraqi use of chemical weapons,' a November 1, 1983 State Department memo said. 'We also know that Iraq has acquired a CW production capability, primarily from western firms, including possibly a US foreign subsidiary.' Washington did not publicly denounce Iraqi use of chemical weapons until March, 1984 after it was documented in a UN study. The Reagan administration opened full diplomatic relations with Baghdad in November, 1984. Iraqi chemical attacks continued not only on Iranian forces but also on Kurdish civilians, notably at Hallabja in 1987." And Reagan-Bush actually armed and financed Hussein's army.

David Corn writes, "I have a vision. On the day that the remains of Ronald Reagan are transported from the US Capitol to the National Cathedral for the funeral services, the hearse will pass 800 black crosses. Each cross will represent one of the men, women and children who were killed by the Salvadoran military in the village of El Mozote in December 1981. Each would be a reminder that the dead man now celebrated in the media as a lover of freedom and democracy oversaw a foreign policy that empowered and enabled murderous brutes and thugs in the name of anti-Sovietism. Many innocents in other lands paid dearly for Reagan's crusade... I doubt the villagers of El Mozote were thinking about Reagan's wonderful disposition when made-in-the-USA bullets supplied to their killers by the US government, in accordance with Reagan's foreign policy, were piercing their bodies and ending their non-American lives."

Juan Cole blogs, "Although it would be an exaggeration to say that Ronald Reagan created al Qaeda, it would not be a vast exaggeration. The Carter administration began the policy of supporting the radical Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan who were waging an insurgency against the Soviets after their invasion of that country. But Carter only threw a few tens of millions of dollars at them. By the mid-1980s, Reagan was giving the holy warriors half a billion dollars a year. His officials strong-armed the Saudis into matching the US contribution, so that Saudi Intelligence chief Faisal al-Turki turned to Osama Bin Laden to funnel the money to the Afghans. This sort of thing was certainly done in coordination with the Reagan administration. Even the Pakistanis thought that Reagan was a wild man, and balked at giving the holy warriors ever more powerful weapons. Reagan sent Orrin Hatch to Beijing to try to talk the Chinese into pressuring the Pakistanis."

"The efforts to hide the paranormal and other strange beliefs of the president went as far as to clean up 'his oral meanderings' before a text was released for public consumption. In a 1985 interview with the Wall Street Journal, "Reagan began to talk about thoughts he had earlier in the morning concerning Armageddon, and how he agreed with many theologians who believed the prophecies were coming together. This idea of an impending upcoming Armageddon being spoken of by a leader with his finger on the nuclear button was too much for the White House handlers. The Wall Street Journal quickly exposed the omission, and the White House publicity people scrambled to explain that the writers had 'accidentally' omitted the references to Armegeddon. It was, however, astrology for which Reagan will be remembered by the main stream press, because the White House could not contain the secret."

Pravda: "Death of a public figure often commemorates the end of an epoch,' This [phrase] usually precedes the beginning of a biography of some famous politician, scientist or a military activist. But it would be inappropriate to talk about Ronald Reagan this way, mainly because it is obviously way too early to talk about the end of Reagan's 'empire.' How did people of the former USSR remember Ronald Reagan? Well, first of all, they all remember him as coining the term 'the evil empire.' However, for a number of countries the US remains no lesser 'Evil Empire' than the USSR once was. While declaring one of his major goals to fight communism, Ronald Reagan did not intend to compromise. [But], he was in luck. Had someone else occupied the post of the USSR's General Secretary besides Mikhail Gorbachev, who practically handed Reagan victory, it is highly doubtful that the 40th president of the United States could ever receive the laurels."

The State: "He talked more than he did. Still, the talk mattered and resonates today. Welfare reform, entitlement reform, tax cuts, a balanced budget, a crime crackdown featuring support - even eagerness - for the death penalty, a rallying against family breakdown." Though most of these initiatives are fundamentally rightwing, "Both parties wanted to do those things after Reagan took a crack at them. Yet for the conservatives who regard his vision as the essential truth, the devil has been in the details - rising homelessness during years of growth, programs Americans do not want touched when push comes to shove, and exploding deficits left for successors to tame. Andy Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center, has little doubt Reagan edged Americans to the right in a way that endured." One that endured long enough to give rise to the fascist Bush regime that, more than any other presidency, has undermined every principle upon which America was founded.

David Corn lists 66 things you WON'T hear about on TV this week: "The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt. Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, 'homeless by choice,' Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, 'constructive engagement' with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy's astrologer." Read the rest...

When Carter was president, he pushed for more efficient use of energy and for the development of alternative fuels. But in 1980, Reagan was elected, and as a symbol of his solidarity with the oil barons, he removed the solar panels Carter had installed from the White House. Now, 30 years later, we are looking down the barrel of the end of affordable oil - by 2008, according to a consortium of scientists, oil execs and academics called the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. Had Carter been elected in 1980 instead of Reagan and the pursuit of alternative fuel thus had a chance to get its legs under it, today, we would not be slaves to Big Oil.

Robert Parry writes: "The U.S. news media's reaction to Ronald Reagan's death is putting on display what has happened to American public debate in the years since Reagan's political rise in the late 1970s: a near-total collapse of serious analytical thinking at the national level. Across the U.S. television dial and in major American newspapers, the commentary is fawning almost in a Pravda-like way, far beyond the normal reticence against speaking ill of the dead... Yet absent from the media commentary was the one fundamental debate that must be held before any reasonable assessment can be made of Ronald Reagan and his Presidency: How, why and when was the Cold War 'won'? If, for instance, the United States was already on the verge of victory over a foundering Soviet Union in the early-to-mid-1970s, as some analysts believe, then Reagan's true historic role may not have been 'winning' the Cold War, but helping to extend it."

William Rivers Pitt writes: "Ronald Reagan is dead now, and everyone is being nice to him. In every aspect, this is appropriate. He was a husband and a father, a beloved member of a family, and he will be missed by those he was close to. His death was long, slow and agonizing because of the Alzheimer's Disease which ruined him, one drop of lucidity at a time... In this mourning space, however, there must be room made for the truth. Writer Edward Abbey once said, 'The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads.' The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye."

Reagan had barely drawn his last breath before the Repugs and their media cohorts were out in force, trying to inflate Reagan's role as the man "who ended the cold war" - a transparent effort to try to validate Bush's "anti-evil" crusade. But as this Atlantic Monthly 1994 article points out: "The Carter-Reagan military buildup did not defeat the Soviet Union. On the contrary, it prolonged the Cold War. Gorbachev's determination to reform an economy crippled in part by defense spending... but far more by structural rigidities, fueled his persistent search for an accommodation with the West. That persistence, not SDI, ended the Cold War... Reagan continued to regard the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire'... To break the impasse, Gorbachev tried at the two leaders' summit meeting in Reykjavik to convince Reagan of his genuine interest in ending the arms race and restructuring their relationship on a collaborative basis."

PA News: "Muammar Gaddafi expressed regret today that Ronald Reagan died without ever standing trial for 1986 air strikes he ordered that killed the Libyan leader's adopted daughter and 36 other people. Reagan ordered the air raid in 1986, in response to a disco bombing in Berlin allegedly ordered by Gaddafi that killed [three]and injured 229. Gaddafi was not alone in looking back on Reagan's admin as a dark period. Lebanon's culture minister, Ghazi Aridi said Reagan's admin. ushered in a "bad era" of American Middle East policy that continues to this day. Aridi noted Reagan's support of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and that Donald Rumsfeld also served under Reagan. Former Syrian Ambassador to the UN Haitham al-Kilani said: "Reagan's role was bad for the Arab-Israeli conflict and was specifically against Syria."

Reagan's death brings the 1980s back clearly to mind, sharply highlighting the disturbing similarities between Reagn and Bush's "reigns." Both targeted enemeis as "evil," then used this crusade as an excuse to nearly bankrupt the federal government (we were lucky - the Soviets hit bankruptcy first); both used "optimism" as a smokescreen for gutting social programs and granting corporations unprecedented power; both betrayed the American people through deceit - Reagan through the Iran Contra affair, and Bush through his trumped up war against Iraq (Bush, of course, has gotten many more hundreds killed than Reagan, to Reagan's credit). And, both let others take the fall for their crimes. As rightwing darling Dr. Laura has oft stated: You don't get extra credit just for dying or getting old.

The death of Ronald Reagan, America's 40th president, evoked a world of remembrances Saturday -- from friends, Republican political soulmates and Democrats and opponents who squared off against him. "Ronald Reagan was a man who changed history," said U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., whose party spent 12 years trying to reclaim the White House after Reagan captured it in 1980. "He won the Cold War without firing a shot," former Republican National Committee chairman Jim Gilmore said. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Reagan's conservative counterpart across the Atlantic in the 1980s, invoked the "millions of men and women who live in freedom today because of the policies he pursued." And from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry: "Even when he was breaking Democrats' hearts, he did so with a smile and in the spirit of honest and open debate. ... He was the voice of America in good times and in grief."

Since the news hit on Saturday (6/5) afternoon that Ronald Reagan had died, the corporate media and rightwingers (mostly synonymous) are scrambling and clawing over themselves to grab the best advantage out of the event. From Jesse Helms to FOX News to Jerry Falwell, they are all trying to wrap themselves up in Reagan's ghost to validate everything from the Bush use of the word "evil" (as in "evil empire" - remember?) to the massive tax cuts Reagan gave that left the nation in such deep debt it took ten years to recover from it. The message, of course: Bush = Reagan; rightwing wacko policy = Reagan policy. Even we progressives wouldn't cast such dark aspersions on the memory of the 40th prez. Here Jerry Falwell tries to cash in by pushing his "close friendship" with Ronald.

"Nancy Reagan voiced her opposition Friday to an attempt by Republican lawmakers to put Ronald Reagan's likeness on the dime in place of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 'While I can understand the intentions of those seeking to place my husband's face on the dime, I do not support this proposal and I am certain Ronnie would not,' the former first lady said in a statement released Friday. 'When our country chooses to honor a great President such as Franklin Roosevelt by placing his likeness on our currency, it would be wrong to remove him and replace him with another,' she said. 'It is my hope that the proposed legislation will be withdrawn.'" Let's demand Bill Clinton's face on a dollar, since he was 10 times the President that Reagan was!

Frank Rich writes: "Sunday [Nov. 16] would have been the night when Americans might have tuned into Part 1 of 'The Reagans' on CBS. But the joke is on the whiners who forced the mini-series off the air. Just three weeks from Sunday, HBO will present the first three-hour installment of Mike Nichols's film version of Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America,' starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep. (Part 2 is a week later.) This epic is, among other things, a searing indictment of how the Reagan administration's long silence stoked the plague of AIDS in the 1980's."

From GLAAD: "'Media have repeatedly failed to challenge Reagan supporters' revisionism efforts, and they've failed to provide commentary by scientists, historians and AIDS experts who can detail the true history of the Reagan Administration's policy response to HIV and AIDS,' said GLAAD's Joan Garry. Though one line in The Reagans script that has received considerable attention (where Reagan says of AIDS victims, 'They that live in sin shall die in sin') is clearly fictionalized, the broader reality it attempts to convey is evident in the history of the federal government's inadequate response to the AIDS crisis under the Reagan Administration. Reagan did not publicly utter the word 'AIDS' during the first six years of his administration (his first public mention of the disease was made to the Third International AIDS Conference on May 31, 1987)... The San Diego Union Tribune quoted Reagan as telling the conference, 'Final judgment is up to God.'"

Juan Cole writes, "Ronald Reagan bears substantial responsibility for 9-11. He [was] so gung ho to roll back Communism that they funneled billions of dollars to scruffy far rightwing radical Muslim mujahidin in Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Orrin Hatch even flew to Beijing for Reagan in 1985 to ask the Chinese to pressure Pakistan to allow the US to provide the Mujahidin with ever more sophisticated weaponry. Even the Pakistani military had balked at this crazy idea, knowing who the Gulbuddin Hikmatyars and Usama Bin Ladens really were (unlike clueless Reagan, who called them freedom fighters). But the US twisted the Pakistanis' arms, and they gave in. Likewise, Reagan forced the timid Saudis to match US contributions to the Mujahidin. It was the CIA that first established terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to hit the leftist government in Kabul. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the camps used by al-Qaeda had been built originally by" Reagan.

"To CBS President Leslie Moonves: As someone who served with President Reagan, and in the interest of historical accuracy, please allow me to share with you some of my recollections of the Reagan years that I hope will make it into the final cut of the mini-series: $640 toilet seats; ketchup as a vegetable; union busting; firing striking air traffic controllers; Iran-Contra; selling arms to terrorist nations; trading arms for hostages; retreating from terrorists in Beirut; lying to Congress; financing an illegal war in Nicaragua; visiting Bitburg cemetary; a cozy relationship with Saddam Hussein; shredding documents; Ed Meese; Fawn Hall; Oliver North; James Watt; apartheid apologia; the savings and loan scandal; voodoo economics; record budget deficits; double digit unemployment; farm bankruptcies; trade deficits; astrologers in the White House; Star Wars; and influence peddling." You GO, John!

RNC chair Ed Gillespie "asked CBS to allow a team of historians and friends of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife to review a miniseries about the couple before it airs... Gillespie said that if CBS denies the request, he will ask the network to run a note across the bottom of the screen every 10 minutes during the program's presentation informing viewers that the miniseries is not accurate... Gillespie added that print and TV ads are being prepared to rebut the miniseries and that Republicans may try to buy time to run the ads during the miniseries." Hey CBS - we'd like to review the miniseries too! Will it make clear that Reagan lived in a fantasy world... that his Alzheimer's was covered up and put the nation dangerously at risk... that he sold WMD to Saddam Hussein... that he left behind a $3 trillion debt and massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons that our grandchildren will have to pay for? We want the naked TRUTH about Reagan - not warm-and-fuzzy fiction!

Drudge reports, "p. 209 During Iran-Contra Scandal - INT. REAGANS'S BREAKFAST ROOM - WHITE HOUSE - MORNING Reagan and Nancy sit in front of their breakfast. They can't eat. Can't drink. They're numb. REAGAN: It's Armageddon... that's what it is. Armageddon. The Leader from the West will be revealed as the anti-Christ, and then God will strike him down. That's me. I am the anti-Christ. NANCY: No, Ronnie... REAGAN (overriding): And the Lord will strike down all of civilization, in order to make way for the new order... a new Heaven and a new Earth... Nancy reaches out, grabs his hand, strongly. NANCY: Hold on. You've got to hold on, Ronnie. Reagan's eyes are filling with tears. He can't help it. He's crumbling. REAGAN: I saved 77 lives in 7 years, Nancy... But I couldn't save those people in Lebanon. Nancy gets up, puts her arms around him. She rocks him slowly, silently, back and forth." No wonder Nancy wants the movie scrubbed!

"Conservative Republicans, for whom Mr Reagan is a living icon of a golden age, are deeply suspicious of the biographical soap opera, entitled The Reagans, convinced that it will turn out to be a liberal hatchet job. They point to accounts from leaked scripts which play up the former president's absent-mindedness, laziness and moral righteousness, and question their factual underpinnings. In one scene, Nancy Reagan urges her husband to do more to help Aids sufferers, but he blocks the discussion, declaring: 'They that live in sin shall die in sin.' His supporters claim he would never had said such a thing [citing] Lou Cannon, who told the New York Times that though Mr Reagan was 'a bit asleep at the switch', he was, however, 'not intolerant'. But in the official biography, entitled Dutch, by Edmund Morris, the former US president is quoted as saying of the condition Aids: 'Maybe the Lord brought down this plague', because 'illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments'."

Here's an amazing special report from the San Francisco Chronicle. "Reagan, Hoover, and the University of California Red Scare: Secret FBI files show how the bureau's covert campaign to disrupt the Free Speech Movement and topple UC President Clark Kerr helped launch the political career of an actor named Ronald Reagan." Coming at a time when the FBI is under increased scrutiny, this expose could not be more timely. Should the FBI be given any additional power to interfere in American politics?

LA Times columnist Robert Scheer writes, "Since the election of Ronald Reagan, the apostles of an unregulated market, lavishly financed by business lobbyists, have demolished barriers to corporate greed and corruption that for most of a century had served this country well. The Enron debacle is just the most damning in a long list of evidence that the zealots of deregulation did this country, and its free-enterprise system, a terrible disservice. The financial markets are now roiled and may be permanently damaged by profound suspicion of corporate practices on the part of investors, who now realize they have good reason to fear the worst. The deregulation ideology of modern conservatism, endorsed mightily by our current president, who cited Enron as a model, holds that big business can best police itself." Like its absolutist counterpart Communism, Reaganism is dead - thanks to Enron.

"Reagan even took a bullet for us on the job. Thank the man for that. But when you talk about canonizing him, you can go suck a sprinkler head. Ronald Reagan may have been a likable guy—even in the White House, he answered his fan mail, sometimes enclosing a check to a citizen going through hard times—but his administration was also flat-out the most anti-democratic, hoodwinking, lying, Constitution-flouting, despot-coddling, rich-enriching, deficit-building, environment-despoiling, health-endangering, paranoid, cynical and fundamentally corrupt one in our nation’s history. Name a strip mine for it if you must, but no monuments, please." So writes Jim Washburn in Orange County Weekly.

"Richard Crenna and Richard Dreyfuss star in this riveting behind-the-scenes account of the chaos following the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. When it becomes clear that President Reagan (Crenna) has been seriously injured, the White House is thrown into disarray, with ambitious General Alexander Haig (Dreyfuss) assuming control. When Russia appears to be deploying nuclear missiles, Haig's grab for power will have serious consequences." Incredibly, the Houston Post and the AP reported at the time that Neil Bush was to have dinner with Scott Hinckley -- the brother of shooter John Hinckley -- the night after the shooting. And Hinckley Sr was a top campaign contributor to Bush Sr.'s 1980 campaign. (Enter 'bush hinckley' at a search engine such as Google). Will the film even mention these facts? Airtimes: Showtime (regular) Monday, 1/07/02 at 10 PM ET/PT and Tuesday, 1/15/02 at 12:00 AM ET/PT.

Just when Northern Virginians thought it was safe to get back on the subway, a clique of Congressmen from points faraway have revived the conspiracy to deny federal transportation monies if the regional Metro authority declines to spend $400,000 on re-labeling the airport stop to display Reagan's name. The man to help us block this misguided juggernaut is none other than…Ronald Reagan. Were he not stricken with Alzheimer's, the Great Communicator would be speaking out against such unfunded federal mandates. He also would instinctively dismiss this fanatical effort to litter our freedom-loving nation with temples of cult-leader glorification worthy of Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro or Kim Il Sung.

Reagan's National Security Advisor Richard Allen is not the only one revisiting the Reagan assassination attempt -- none other than Oliver Stone is currently filming "The Day Reagan Got Shot," with Richard Dreyfuss playing Alexander Haig. Stone, the ultimate conspiracy theorist, could have a field day with the little-known friendship between Neil Bush and the Hinckley family. Believe it or not, on 3/31/81 (the day after Reagan was shot), the Associated Press ran an item from the Houston Post: "The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign....Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley Jr. who allegedly shot at Reagan, was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the Vice President's sons." The next day the Houston Post reported that Bush confirmed the relationship. While we take this with a grain of salt, we still reserve that salt for our popcorn. After years of the crazy Clinton Body Count being trumpeted by the Freepers, who says we can't still enjoy the show?

Richard Allen, who was Ronald Reagan's national security advisor when Reagan was shot in 1981, has pulled back the curtain on the men who created the illusion that Reagan was actually president. Allen recorded the conversations in the Situation Room where top officials gathered to cope with the crisis. As we all recall, Secretary of State Al Haig *thought* he was in charge, but Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was putting troops on alert without telling Haig. No mention of the activities of Chief of Staff James Baker, who was probably making the most important decisions - without telling anyone.

The Ronald Reagan Sanctification Society is not satisfied with a massive office building, an airport, and an aircraft carrier (whatever happened to smaller government). Now they want a monument on the Mall, in direct violation of a law signed by Reagan that barred any memorials on the Mall until 25 years after a person's death. If anything should be named after Reagan, it's the $5 trillion debt that he and his pal George I left as their greatest legacy to America.

Robert Wendell Walker Jr. tried to rob First National Bank of Oregon in downtown Portland. He surrendered in 1970 and was sentenced to five years on probation. Ronald Reagan granted him a pardon in 1981, for reasons unknown. On November 3, he was arrested for the murder of his wife. She was shot and her body was burned.

According to Cindy Adams of the New York Post, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, did not vote for George Jr. Worse, she refers to him, among other things, as "the village idiot". It seems she wasn't too keen on George, Sr., either.

It was during the Reagan era that the Chinese efforts to gain U.S. military intellingence began to flourish. And, in large part, it all began with Ollie North and Iran/Contra. But the NY Times and its star disinformation specialist Jeff Gerth (who single-handedly created the "Whitewater scandal" at the urging of the Bush I administration) falsely put the blame on the Clinton Administration.

Contrary to the "conventional wisdom", the size and spending of the Federal Government actually GREW under Reagan. In contrast, these figures were later REDUCED under Bill Clinton. It also turns out that taxes under Reagan were not significantly less than those under Clinton. In realizing a longer period of prosperity than Reagan, Clinton balanced the budget and began to pay down the three trillion dollar debt racked up by Ron for his Reagan "prosperity".

Okay, lighten up for a moment. Nancy Reagan compiled Ron's love notes in a new anthology called "I Love You, Ronnie: The Letters of Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan." Wait, finish your meal before you rush out to buy a copy. He also called her "Nancy Poo Pants," just in case you wanted to know.