Moe Lane

Alternate title: gnat discusses lion.

I suppose that I am supposed to be upset about this, for some reason.

Offering an historical footnote Saturday to one of the most memorable lines of the Cold War, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev confessed Saturday that he was underwhelmed when President Ronald Reagan demanded in 1987 that he “..tear down this wall.”

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth,” Gorbachev said through a Russian interpreter, in response to a question about Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech, after addressing an audience at Judson University in Elgin. “Don’t be surprised but we really were not impressed. We knew that Mr. Reagan’s original profession was actor.”

And Mr. Gorbachev’s was “bootlicking lackey for one of the most disgusting, vicious tyrannies in human history.” Gorbachev went on to be the one wearing the biggest boots, while Reagan of course staked down Soviet Communism and ripped its black, suppurating heart out of its chest, all the while merrily laughing with the mirth of the just as the thing that he was executing died like a coward* – so I will leave it to my readers to decide who got the most out of Career Day.

Via @TomBevanRCP.

Moe Lane

PS: I wonder if Mikhail Gorbachev really gets it – in his bones – that by all rights he should have ended his life being strung up on a lamppost?

*I certainly hope that this image offends and disgusts any Marxist reading it.  It’s meant to.

Is it cruel to point out that when Paul Krugman says that an alien invasion would save Keynesianism…

…he’s pretty much cribbing off of Reagan’s observation that an alien invasion would unite humanity and war among us?

Or is it just sad that Krugman comes across as profoundly intellectually stunted, in comparison?  I mean, if we’re going to have an alien invasion serve a higher purpose then I’d personally prefer a more meaningful one than salvaging a somewhat dunderheaded liberal economic theory.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Gotta love* these kids and their crazy Reagan talk.  It’s the usual classic cargo-cult thinking, coupled with an equally-classic why-won’t-these-conservatives-in-real-life-act-like-the-conservatives-living-in-my-head?  For the slow of brain (which is to say, the online progressive movement), let me deign to explain why invoking the Gipper should only be done by experts. (more…)

You know, I don’t know if I WANT to check this one out:  the mere fact that there’s a credible source out there claiming that John “Imagine” Lennon* was secretly fond of the Gipper (and couldn’t stand Jimmy Carter – but then, what sane person can?) is enough, in some ways.  The source is Fred Seaman, one of Lennon’s assistants during the last years of the singer’s life, and Seaman essentially said that Lennon’s change of heart was because Lennon grew up:

“He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he’d been when he wrote Imagine. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naivete.”

Mind you, a 95% marginal tax rate can have a way of clarifying one’s mind when it comes to working out one’s political philosophy.  There’s a reason why so many British bands moved here in the Sixties and Seventies; well, a reason beside the obvious one…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*No, that’s George “Taxman” Harrison that you’re thinking of.

Happy birthday, sir.

People ask where Ronald Reagan’s monument is.

To which I say: look around you.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

It is my first instinct to treat this report of Ronald Reagan Jr’s… commentary… by simply letting it pass by without a response.  For those not wishing to click through, the boy (use of term deliberate) is indulging elderly liberal fetishists everywhere by making the claim that his father was suffering from Alzheimer’s as far back as the 1984 debates*, as well as ‘details’ regarding a supposed operation in 1989 that had even the US News & World Report doing some fancy footwork in order to avoid having to declare it a lie.  It’s the Left; it’s pornography; it’s Left-porn.  Outside of that particular niche market, its utility is… low.

So why even bother addressing it?  Simple: because Ron Reagan Jr picked his dates carefully.  1984 and 1986 are before 1987, which the boy made a point of explicitly referencing as being the year that his father should have resigned.  1987 is the year that the boy wants people to decide was a year where his father’s illness was clearly and obviously advanced.  1987 is the year where the boy wants his father to be dead inside.

The only problem is, 1987 is the year of the Brandenburg Speech.  You know: ‘tear down this wall.’

(more…)

I was laughing hysterically at the title of this article – “Mondale on Obama, and how he could’ve beat Reagan” – because the very idea that President Obama could have had the chops to knock down the Gipper is hysterical.  Then I actually read the article, and it was actually all about how Mondale thinks that he could have knocked down the Gipper.  So I stopped laughing.

Why?  Because Walter Mondale is 82 years old.  When I am 82, if I am saying things like this it is my fond hope that others will show me the same forbearance that I am showing now.

AoSHQ (and Sarah Palin) reminds me of this:

Not the event itself: but the details behind it. It’s a little jarring to realize that there are people who can vote (and soon, drink legally) in this country who don’t have personal memories of the Berlin Wall; or what it represented.  I was seventeen when this speech took place; and like the AoSHQ writer I considered Ronnie Raygun to be a fool.  Because, you know, maybe the Commies weren’t as powerful as we thought in 1980, but they weren’t going anywhere.  Right?

Yeah, seventeen and stupid. (more…)

Or, as I like to think of it, the day where the Forces of Good and Light hammered the first stake through the rotten black heart of Soviet Communism, pausing only to savor the screams and sobs as the monster futilely begged, with ever-decreasing volume, for its very life.

AND THEN WE USED THE EVENT TO SELL SOFT DRINKS.

WHO BURIED WHO, NIKITA?

Moe Lane

PS: Just for added schadenfreude towards the Commies, HEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRREEEEEE’S RONNIE!

Check out the bobble at the end.  Not conclusive, but at least worth noting.

Via Scott Ott‘s Facebook account; I agree with Scott that Chip Reid’s asking a legitimate question about Reagan’s notable lack of a Nobel Peace Prize*.  I will also note that my wife laughed out loud at Gibbs’ suggestion that the Washington pundit class get out more; so did I, but that was also because Gibbs needs to be at the head of that particular line.

Moe Lane

*I already know the answer, though.  So does Scott.  So does Chip Reid.  Heck, so does Gibbs.  But really, what is he going to say? “Well, they led my boss in unto temptation, and he’s enthusiastic about giving in?”

Which is the real reason that they never offered it to Reagan.  He would have accepted it, graciously – and then used it to further his vision of peace, not the Nobel prize committee’s.

Crossposted to RedState.

Dan Collins – who has by the way moved Piece of Work In Progress: update your links – has a post about the opposition to the President that shouldn’t be excerpted, but must be.  A taste:

…they get stonewalled at town halls packed deliberately with union supporters, or find that their Representative has literally decided to phone the meeting in, and they are accused of being astroturfed, even as they watch people from out of state bused in to support the health care fiasco.  They see Lyndon LaRouche wackos carrying Obama Nazi signs characterized as right-wingers.  They hear that their concerns are those of a small and demented minority.  They see videos cropped to make it seem as though they’re racists. They are told that their opposition to Obama’s policies springs from racism on talk shows and in editorials.  They receive unsolicited emails from Axelrod after being told that their information’s not being kept by the White House, and then it’s blamed on advocacy groups across a broad political spectrum.  They recall that there were 8 years of BusHitler rhetoric that went unchallenged in the MSM, which suddenly is up in arms about the extraordinary incivility of such comparisons.

[snip]

Oh, yeah, they’re angry.  But it’s not because they’re stupid.  It’s because “Trust us; we despise you” isn’t really very civil, is it?

Read the whole thing, and let me add one more of my own: (more…)

Mad, mad Oliver! (Link fixed.)

…I was going to write this whole thing up Dr. Seuss-style, but honestly? It came out completely lame. Anyway, it’s really simple: Oliver Stone’s angry as anything over the way that people cruelly went out and didn’t see his last movie, so he does what anybody would in his situation (and mindset) – go onto Bill Maher’s show and call Reagan and Bush stupid poopyheads. It’s cheaper than therapy, which Oliver Stone probably can’t afford right now anyway.

It always fascinates me how certain elements of the antiwar movement are so determined to discount the intelligence of the very people that effortlessly kicked their ass on foreign policy. I mean, they didn’t even slow down either President – so if Ronnie and/or W were dumb, then what does that make them?

Moe Lane

PS: All that being said, I liked The Doors.

Crossposted to RedState.