The above headline was President Ronald Reagan's famous saying, which became a Republican big business "mantra."

The passage of time permits us to fairly analyze this popular big business slogan to see exactly how it worked in practice.

In 2008 we vividly see how decidedly dangerous and foolish Reagan's slogan really was.

By 2008 the meltdown of the mortgage market demonstrates dramatically what happened when the government "got off" regulating the U.S. banks' mortgage loan departments.

This week I have been focused on my real job, so this week's newsletter not quite as in depth as I sometimes do. This week I am focusing on what I consider some interesting races around the country. I may do that for a few weeks or so because I am learning about so many really good people running who I want to help. This week I focus on Nebraska Senate, Oklahoma Senate, and an Iowa state legislature race.

Last week I discussed the economic mess we are in. Someone commented that I am making things up and that job growth has been fine under Bush. She claimed I gave no evidence that job growth has been nearly flat during the Bush administration. Well, let me quote Paul Krugman, with an illustration:

The old cliché "The chickens have come home to roost" accurately describes the economic disaster born in the U.S.A.  Now it is spreading worldwide as the government failed to supervise the U.S. banking system.

A noted biblical admonition also accurately describes the current economic disaster, "If you sow to the wind, you will reap the whirlwind."

But we need not worry!  When Bear Stearns was about to go bankrupt, its CEO had waltzed away with approximately $40 million during the last few years of his mismanagement.  Investors were reaping the whirlwind that Bear Stearns had generated.

"Life isn't always fair" is another cliché appropriately fitting today's monumental meltdown in the mortgage market.

With the Bush Administration's chamber of horrors track record, desperate Republican strategists resurrect the Reagan reign of error.

Ronald Reagan boasted about balancing the budget.  Sadly, he wound up tripling the U.S. budget deficit.  Then to salvage his administration's track record, they named the Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan - Reagan National Airport.

If plunging the nation into deep dept with credit card type budget spending is the criterion, George Bush should definitely have EVERY airport named after him and with good reason.  The so-called conservatives, falsely, of course, the Republican-led Bush Administration has plunged the U.S.A. into a $10 trillion debt.  

So isn't it only logical that if the Republicans honored a president like Reagan who tripled the national debt to be so honored to have an airport named after him, shouldn't Bush with the biggest national debt, greater than all prior debts combined, have EVERY U.S. airport named after him?  

It is interesting, Senator McCain, how you, in an effort to get more Republicans aboard  your presidential ship, how you push two buttons you hope will achieve immediate success:  1) accusing the Democrats of "surrender"; 2) invoking the name of Ronald Reagan as you proclaim yourself to have been an early foot soldier in the "Reagan Revolution."

Since you brought up the subject of surrender, let us explore it with you and Reagan.  Beginning with yourself, what about that disgraceful 2000 Republican primary campaign in South Carolina when the forces of George W. Bush.

Led by Karl Rove, the ruthless neocons attacked your wife as a harlot, attacked your mental stability, and used stereotypical racism by alleging that you had a "black" daughter, meaning the little girl you adopted from Bangladesh?

Many of us attacked this shameful scorched earth style of savage and thoroughly repugnant campaigning.  At one debate with Larry King moderating you demanded that Bush not even touch you.

Mr. Hannity: "Liberals," including US Catholic bishops, reproachfully stirred up millions of people to join nuclear freeze demonstrations in the early 1980s. (p. 76)

My response: Some brief background on this issue might help clarify the discussion. Early in the Cold War, American administrations pursued a strategic, offensive-defense security doctrine known as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The idea was for the US to maintain "strategic parity" with the Soviet Union --that is, a balance among number, power, sophistication and readiness of atomic bombs such that neither country would dare to start a nuclear war against the other thanks to fear of equally destructive retaliation by the adversary. Except for a temporary challenge during President John F. Kennedy's administration, which began courageously downsizing America's nuclear arsenal, the MAD doctrine more or less continued to guide American nuclear policy through containment to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of the 1970s, which aimed to mutually reduce US and Soviet nuclear forces. The acronym of MAD was quite appropriate; this delicate policy was truly insane, as it could not be continued for long without leading eventually to a global nuclear disaster.

What a heady time it was!  The Reagan Revolution had begun with his election in 1980 and there was one hugely symbolic, meaningful act that the new regime was delighted to perform to show that the old regime had gone and a new philosophy had emerged.

The newly arrived Reagan team could hardly wait to have functionaries climb onto the White House roof and remove all those absurd solar energy collectors that the man they considered the big bad wolf of pessimists, President Jimmy Carter, had installed, warning all the while about energy depletion and the severed consequences that this held not only for America but the entire planet.

While the era of Doctor Feelgood Reagan had begun the new team and followers had almost as much fun poking fun at Reagan's successor as California's governor, Jerry Brown, as they did Carter.  

Brown was designated "Governor Moonbeam" since those ideas he was advocating had, like Carter's, an "Uncle Scrooge" implication.  Brown warned of an ecological disaster if America did not face the challenge of runaway energy consumption.  How absurd, the critics laughed, the guy was in the wrong century and sounded like Thomas Malthus reinvented.

Superman Charlie Wilson, played by Tom Hanks, is a congressman from Texas.  He is depicted in this fantasy flick "Charlie Wilson's War" as a hard drinking patriot, who stops at nothing to help overthrow those meddlesome Russians out of Afghanistan.

As this film focuses early on one of those elegant Texas mansions, we meet an extremely wealthy Texas lady.  At the lavish party setting, she is delighted to show Charlie Wilson around her mansion.  Julia Roberts, playing the Texas lady, is stunning.  They glide up the ornate staircase to her bedroom, one of 14 in the mansion, she boasts with a lyrical laugh.

The décor of the bedroom is high style, but her design on Wilson's body propels them into a rapid sexual interlude.

After all, she is throwing a well attended party and she mustn't let their sexual appetites allow them to be impolite and ignore all those other hard drinking guests.

Remember when the late religious right icon Jerry Falwell made his morality charge that God was punishing gays with Aids?

Statistics now reveal that heterosexuals by far have the mot cases of aids.

If Jerry were around today would Jerry tell his faithful flock that God was now punishing heterosexuals with aids?

Before Jerry left us he felt the Iraq War was the right thing for the U.S. to do.

I along with many others recently received an e-mail from Robert Greenwald stressing an important point - the manner in which Fox News has become a blatant neoconservative spear launcher in the war realm.

Greenwald knows Fox well, having produced an excellent documentary Outfoxed that doubtlessly still provokes curses in the station's boardroom.  Greenwald issued a call to concerned Americans to energize and vigorously fight Fox in its attempt to circulate war propaganda to launch another war in the Middle East, this time in Iran.

An important link needs to be recognized stressing that Fox News engaged in vigorous saber rattling propaganda against Iraq.  In addition to numerous efforts to enrage Americans that Saddam Hussein needed to be overthrown, Fox commentators warned unrelentingly that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein intended to unleash against America.

The Fox war drumbeaters were at optimum level in lavishly praising Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations, in which badly flawed information was deceitfully presented as fact.  Fox was so impressed by Powell's presentation, one that many informed Middle East analysts immediately began questioning and refuting, was classified as "a virtuoso performance."

A recent column suggesting that the neocon image machine was busy grooming former Tennessee U.S. Senator Fred Thompson as a citizen politician, who stands above the battle, reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, is moving forward briskly.

Despite all the huffing and puffing by Republican right propagandists about Hollywood and its left wing domination, neocons of the Karl Rove stripe have an affection for actors since it is easy to blur reality with image since imagery is so strongly defined within the acting profession while images that were displayed on movie and television screens can be more easily inculcated into the public mind.  

This is particularly true in the image driven fantasy world of Fox News, Clear Channel and a society of submissive Fox zombies and Rush Limbaugh dittoheads.  

Reagan was a cowboy television narrator on "Death Valley Days" and later the GOP image machine worked overtime to depict him as just the man to topple the Soviet Union and battle terrorists all over the globe.  While the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed, historical analysis has determined with each year of analysis that this demise was ultimately destined to occur.  

David McClain of Seattle in the June 6 Seattle Times had this to say in a letter to the editors:

"Keeping the military machine in the Middle East is not in our best interest, as it radicalizes those who perceive us as an aggressive imperial force, serving no defensive purpose.

"If we want to wager perpetual war for perpetual peace, then by all means let's charge abroad and impose ourselves upon every corner of the globe.

"We'll go broke in the process and will be on high terror alert every day of our lives."

In what amounts to a tragic sea of corporate packaged trivia featuring the likes of various "Survivor" format programs and entertainment gossip shows featuring whatever Paris Hilton has done lately, "60 Minutes" continues as a gem of informative magazine format programming.

What marks "60 Minutes" apart from the aforementioned commercial offerings is an unrelenting determination to tackle the big issues facing America and the world.  If these issues happen to be controversial and hard-hitting, so much the better.  

It was "60 Minutes" that provided Seymour Hersh with an opportunity to cut through Cheney-Bush spin control and provide facts on what is really happening in Iraq and how that tragedy occurred.  

We also saw Leslie Stahl interview the bombastic Ahmad Chalibi and give him the opportunity to reveal himself as the charlatan he is, the highly paid huckster who sold the "weapons of mass destruction" argument to the O'Reillys and Hannitys of the world.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

So when did you first realize our country was led by liars? Was there a particular incident, campaign or speech resulting in an epiphany? Did a cynical role model let you know our country's decision makers could not be trusted to tell the truth?