Reagan sold weapons to terrorists in Iran

After a long, tedious week of reminiscence, Reagan will actually be buried today. It is important to take a step back and remember what the man actually did for our country, and honor his legacy now and in the future. To summarize:

Reagan sold weapons to terrorists in Iran, then gave the money to terrorists in Nicaragua.

In other news, I feel that an important social contract with me has been broken today. When you open the cap of the Sierra Mist bottle just a little bit, it foams up and then subsides. The social contract then says that you should be able to twist it all the way off without having the damn bottle EXPLODE all over your laptop and phone. What the hell?

Drop Reagan into the sea

You know what would be a fitting tribute to Reagan? Maybe the plane carrying him to Washington today can open up in the back and dump him into the sea, like happened to so many victims of the Central American death squads he supported.

I read a really interesting book online today, discussing the psychological trends behind the Reagan presidency and the American people. Basically, Reagan carried with him from childhood a deep-seated fear of castration and amputation, and it was a common theme that drew through much of his action as a leader.

As expected, the wave of "pretend Reagan was America's last hero" pressure has continued since the weekend. Here's a typical conversation, completely made up by me (like so many of Reagan's homespun bullshitty stories):

Person: Reagan was our best president ever.
Me: How can you say that? He was evil - EVIL! Here's a list of 243 things he did wrong. (Start with Iran-contra, work backwards through dead Americans in Beirut and capitulating to terrorists by removing troops, Bitburg, deficits, ketchup, etc. etc.)
Person: Typical liberal, all you have is "Reagan was evil" but no substance. He was so much better than Clinton, who was sleazy and crooked and everyone hated.
Me: Actually, if you look it up you'll find that Clinton's popularity over eight years was identical to Reagan's. And he was more popular than Reagan at the time they each left office.
Person: Well, but Reagan was decent and honest and Clinton was a
lying scumbag.
Me: Strangely enough, Reagan's administration was so crooked that it ended up with 30 convictions for crimes committed while in office. And that doesn't even include the big ones, Iran-contra, which Bush pardoned! Clinton's administration had exactly one.
Person: But Reagan was the Great Communicator!
Me: Weren't you the one who told me last week that you liked Bush because he didn't communicate well and that showed he was sincere? It sounds like you just like these people because they're willing to water down school milk to give you a fake tax cut and you're just backfilling their qualities to suit.
Person: Reagan was our best president ever, and you're an un-American asshole.

Win one for the Gipper!

Today was the first Fire Island Monday of the commuting season. Honestly, what a bunch of tards. You can tell them immediately - they're sitting around the Bay Shore station, sprawled out in groups of three and four, blocking the platform with their backpacks and oversized suitcases and shitty little yap dogs, and they're all desperately sipping coffee to get back to reality. Then on the train they wheel on their backpacks and oversized suitcases and shitty little yap dogs and leave them in the aisle. Jerks.

We're in Day Two of the Reagan Post-Mortem, where we're all supposed to pretend that Reagan was the greatest, most beloved American in history. We're supposed to bump Hamilton off the $10 bill in favor of Ronnie. We're supposed to sandblast his face onto Mount Rushmore. We're supposed to name a monument after him in every county in the United States. Well, guess what? He was atrocious. It's bad enough that the newest Bush strategy is to pretend that the War in Iraq is comparable to World War II in some way, now we're going to have to deal with "Win One Last One For The Gipper."

He was the president though, and he should be shown the proper respect. If you are flying a flag, make sure to keep it at half-mast for a month. A lot of places (Stamford Post Office, William F. Buckley, Jr.'s house) didn't do this when Nixon died. That's just simple respect for the office and the country. If you can't handle this, do what I did - just take the flag down for a month.

Then we have people on hockey chat lists saying stuff like:

> As our passed former President used to say:
> WIN ONE FOR THE GIPPER
>
> As a longtime season ticket holder, I hope we make him proud in his
> grave tonight.

Yeah, that's what Reagan's doing tonight. He's sitting there dead, rooting for a team he never knew existed. Yeesh.

Crazy Jose

For reasons unknown, I never noticed this before, but near the Jamaica station there is a store called Crazy Jose’s Electronics. Curiosity compels me to ask: what on earth would compel someone to patronize a store named after an al-Qaida suspect? Okay, I see the upside. Maybe Jose is so crazy that you walk in and he gives you a new Marantz component system for free. But what about the downside? You walk in, and Crazy Jose thinks you look like the dog who orders him to do his bidding. Before you know it, you’re felled in a hail of broken Sansui tape decks. It really doesn’t seem to be worth the risk.