Or so claims Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides, a piece up at Capitol Hill Blue.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”
Personally, I won't believe a word of it until I read it at Wonkette.
I mean, there were all sorts of insinuations that Reagan was senile while he was still in office, and those turned out to be. . . totally accurate, if not understating the case.
But you must admit that Nancy and her astrologer did a very good job of running the country, and we all enjoy the legacy of their decisions at that crucial time in our history.
Now normally, when Max Speak, I listen.
Respect is due the bereaved, as well as to those who have a good feeling about him. It's just the decent thing to do.
But in this instance, with all due respect, which is less than zero, fuck that noise.
Wow, that looks harsh. I should follow the example of my betters, and demonstrate as much respect for the late President Reagan as he showed towards, say, the late Martin Luther King, in his opposition to. . .
Ok, I'll stop.
Update: May as well stop, as Steve Gilliard says it all much better than I could:
Reagan also embraced Angolan UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, the puppet of the racist South African regime. He repeatedly refused to back away from him, despite South Africa's notorious, and it later turned out, mad, racial policies. Not until 1988, when the Cuban army decisively defeat the SADF at Cuito Carnevale in Angola, did the war end. The US turned its back as the South African-sponsored Renamo massacred their way across Mozambique. No one knows how many Africans died in the wars of South Africa, but US complicity with the racist regime of South Africa helped extend their lifespan. At no point did Reagan do anything to stop this.
Children too young to remember the anti-apartheid movement, or the anti-nukes movement, or the pro-getting Reagan to say "AIDS" movement, may not understand the bitterness expressed towards the guy from some quarters.
Consider yourselves blessed, and leave us old coots to our grave-pissing, eh?
"The magic Reagan: more misguided arguments for his greatness"
[...] More than anything else, it is the issue of race--the constant sticking point in all claims to America's moral transcendency--that thwarts any effort to simplify Ronald Reagan. Was he a racist? Hayward insists that "Reagan never wanted to win an election on a racial appeal." Yet when the struggle for civil rights hung in the balance, Reagan opposed both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965--the bills that ensured black Americans of their most fundamental rights to sit on a public bus and to cast a ballot. He was one of the pioneers of the Republican "Southern strategy," breaking off white Democratic voters through thinly veiled racist appeals, and all four of his presidential campaigns depended heavily upon the support of unrepentant racist politicians, such as North Carolina's Jesse Helms.
Most egregious of all was Reagan's first speech after the 1980 convention, in Philadelphia, Mississippi. It was in Philadelphia that, just sixteen years earlier, the young civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had been murdered by local Klansmen, but Reagan's speech failed to make even the slightest reference to the murders. Instead, it contained the usual code words--"I believe in states' rights and I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level."
The Philadelphia speech--like the rest of the disagreeable past--has been expunged from conservative annals. Hayward at least has the integrity to bring it up, though he still tries to insist that Reagan was only "clearly reiterating his well-known opinion against centralized government power." [...]