Between the Coasts

What Peggy Saw

It has been a slow week of posting and when I do post, it's on Reagan. I guess that will have to be OK. There are not many other people in my lifetime who created such grand outcomes.

Anyway, Peggy Noonan has a good column about her week in remembrance, especially the funeral, and I latched on to this:

I was walking down the aisle when someone called to me and said, "Peggy, Natan Sharansky": a small balding man who looks like a shy accountant. He was in the gulag when Ronald Reagan was president. He was in solitary confinement, and when word would reach him of Reagan's latest anticommunist speech, he would tap out in Morse code a message to his fellow prisoners. And now he was here, a free man, at the funeral of Ronald Reagan, who got him out of the gulag, which was run by Mikhail Gorbachev, who was right over there. Oh life, what a kick in the pants it can be. All I could do as it all flashed through my mind was ask if I could put my arms around him, and all I could think of say was, "Oh, Natan Sharansky." A beautiful moment for me.

That Divisive Reagan

Mr. Henninger provides us with some brilliant analysis - There is no glossing over what really happened and why the politics today are so bitter.

Next to Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan was perhaps the most divisive president in the nation's history. Lincoln ended a way of life for the American South. Reagan said that he was ending a way of life for American liberalism. As with Lincoln, the challenge Reagan posed to his opposition was not merely political or economic. It was profoundly moral--and so worth a death-struggle. The tensions and bitterness evident in the body politic today, and in the current presidential campaign, arrived in Washington in 1981 with the 40th president. This quiet week of remembrance is a temporary truce.

And then this wonderful flourish at the end:

Did Ronald Reagan succeed? He had more measurable success against the Soviet Union. It's gone. Much of the Great Society endures, no longer exciting the brilliant young, and smoking with inefficiencies. But the basic tenet of Reaganism, "the individual genius of man," now has a moral claim in our politics at least equal to the Democrats' distributive justice. The Reagan wars persist in our time because his professed heir, George W. Bush, also cut taxes. Tax revenue is the holy water of liberalism--what they use, they believe, to work social miracles. Ronald Reagan said individuals are the source of miracles, not the government. Those were fighting words. Ronald Reagan departs, a victor.

Cycles in Greatness

An interesting tidbit from Taranto, Presidential Leadership:

Those who believe that history runs in cycles will be interested to note that the three great presidents took office at 72-year intervals--Washington in 1789, Lincoln in 1861 and FDR in 1933--and that this November it will have been exactly 72 years since the election of our last great president.

Clinton Cheese

TK pointed to this Drudge item and had this to say:

Well, if it helps, Bill can speak at my funeral...

I think I know why Clinton wanted to speak at the funeral so badly...After hearing and reading all about Reagan's accomplishments, Clinton realizes how irrelevant he will be in the history books, and he wanted to try to associate himself with greatness, since he was less than great himself. His legacy is squat, and the news coverage of Reagan's death and accomplishments makes it even more apparent than it already was. Maybe he wanted to thank Reagan one last time for economic policies that led to the roaring economy of the 80's and 90's that benefitted him?

Maybe war-protestor flip flop man should have been invited too or maybe the list of speakers is from friends of Reagan?

Wictory Wednesday - Keeping the Legacy

The comparisons between Reagan and Bush 43 are flowing this week. We've had them for a long time. Of course, Reagan was a giant, but Bush needs another 4 years, and honestly, we need for him to have four more years.

If you want to see true optimism stay in the White House, and if you want to make sure the terrorists continue to receive a battle, here's the deal: Today is Wictory Wednesday. Every Wednesday, dozens of bloggers ask their readers to volunteer and/or donate to the Bush 2004 campaign.

Check out some other Wictory Wednesday folks in the special link list on your left [<<<<<<] - Do it - Some of those folks are fighting mightily!

Sky Falling - No Umbrella

Can you imagine how tough it is to move an enormous government bureaucracy in the effort to fight this war? Almost impossible. A story of 2 government buttheads:

The next terrorist attack is coming and the United States is far from prepared, two former senators who are experts in the homeland security movement, said Thursday.

"Myself, my hair is on fire," said former Sen. Gary Hart, borrowing a phrase recently popularized by former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke.

"I for one think it is only a matter of time before [an attack] happens again in a devastating way," former Sen. Warren Rudman said. The two spoke at a McGraw-Hill homeland security conference.

These two jackasses have the complete ability to rip on their president and to predict the next disaster, but if you had them in charge, would it possibly be any better? Hell no. I agree with their premise, but they need to do something about it rather than pointing fingers....

Morrissey's Idiocy

Drudge linked to the article about how Morrisey proclaimed his wish that GWB had died instead of RWR.

I expect idiocy from fellow punk rockers, especially from their DJs - See this post - But the whole gem in this matter comes in a blog-like comment on the Morrissey hatred article:

What can you say. We've seen the paths that those like Neville Chamberlain and Jimmy Carter have tried to lead us all down. Their positions and convictions are admirable when you are dealing with honorable men. Unfortunately, the world is full of those that have little respect for others and will do whatever they can to inflict their will and hate upon the rest of the world. In this world, the likes of Chamberlain and Carter are completely ineffective and indeed nothing but a tool that can be easily manipulated by evil. I love Morrissey's music. "Every Day is like Sunday" still leaves me sitting in my car in the drive waiting for it to finish in the CD player before coming in. But I don't expect someone like Morrissey to grasp the seriousness of the situation. And thankfully, that's not why we pay him. If, on September 10th, the FBI had kicked in the doors of the 9/11 hijackers apartments and detained them on suspicion of intent to terrorists acts, Hollywood and much of the world would still be laughing about how the FBI believed 20 men with boxcutters were going to kill 3000 people. I can almost hear Leno's punchline on September 12: "...and their friend with a spoon was goign to kill another 100" Very few are capable of understanding the seriousness of the situation we face. Ignore the rest. Matt, Seattle 08/06/2004 at 00:00

See the next post.

Leftist Hatred

The Reagan haters are spewing their filth, and I guess that is OK. Ted Rall showed me that he literally has NO HEART -- and I thought these guys had a heart? I think about the shoe on the other foot and Clinton or Carter dying, and I cannot imagine spewing the crap that these guys are spewing.

I am sick because of this hatred.

Now, if you thought all of those guys were bad, check this out: A local radio station, altrenative rock format, has a mostly leftist crew and I try to ask them to give us a bit more balance, but today, they went over the edge:

Lazlo, the afternoon DJ, the self-important liberal who feels he is greater than any of our leaders decided that it would be funny to have a contest to see who was able to figure out that the best two words to describe Ronald Reagan are "Fucking Asshole."

I'm sure this doesn't offend most people but it hacks me off. First of all, why do these dimwits offend a person who has just passed away as well as the 75% of Americans who thought he saved America. This fuckhead should go live in Soviet Russia in the year 1936, the year when my musical hero, Shostakovich, was hammered by the communist fucks. Lazlo has no sense of how the world works but what really scares me is that his station is completely anti-American in its support of his I-hate-Bush-diatribes...He wants Bush dead....He is a sick fuck. These I-want-Bush-dead-sick-idiots are educating our young people. They have no sense of responsibility. Even if it were Carter in office, I would say that the FCC should yank their license, but the FCC doesn't care about the harm these idiots do to the public.