If anyone from Blogger admin should stop by: It would be great if you would update your photo size policies to include photos up to 2000 pixels wide and 1300 pixels high. I post a lot of wallpapers and the most popular monitors are 24" to 26" wide. Those sizes are increasing in popularity because large widescreen monitors are selling for the same price 19" monitors were going for just a couple years ago. If the biggest I can post here is 1600x1200 than I'm not able to keep up with the wallpaper size many people are using. You get better wallpaper viewing quality scaling down than you do stretching to fit.
It's 2010 and The Deranged Reagan Idolatry Continues
In the mean time, the guy that is trying to clean up the disaster Republicans created - President Obama Pushes Green Energy Made in AmericaI swear, I want to stop writing about the nearly-identical political trajectories (at least so far) of the Reagan and Obama presidencies. But too many pundits just can't seem to get it through their heads that Reagan, as president, was not some magical political super-being who was immune to sagging public confidence, poor midterm election prospects, and intraparty dissent and second-guessing that Obama is now faced with. And this week brought us two more egregious offenders.
First, on Wednesday, came a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed from Fouad Ajami, who sort-of acknowledges the parallel between Reagan's standing as the 1982 midterms approached and Obama's today, but then quickly brushes it aside, arguing that Reagan's "deep and true" connection with the public ultimately saw him through -- and that Obama is doomed because he lacks this connection.
...Let's leave aside Ajami's ridiculous contentions about the Reagan crew's respect for the public treasury (ahem); others have provided the context he ignores. The main problem with Ajami's narrative is that there's just no evidence that the unbreakable bond between the president and his people that he celebrates ever really existed -- or that Reagan's poll numbers at any point in his presidency were really that remarkable.
Where, for instance, was the "deep and true" bond in in the 1982 midterms, when double-digit unemployment prompted voters to toss 26 of Reagan's Republican allies out of Congress and to hand seven new governorships to Democrats and 11 state legislative chambers to the Democrats? Or where was it in 1986, when a pre-Iran-Contra Reagan pleaded with Americans -- the Americans with whom he supposedly shared a mutually affectionate relationship -- to preserve his party's control of the Senate, only to watch as voters handed Democrats an eight-seat gain and their first Senate majority since 1980. Moreover, where was it after Reagan left office -- after, in Ajami's words, his adoring countrymen had "carried him across the finish line" -- when a savings-and-loan crisis and recession caused by his policies undermined his Republican successor and prompted Americans to revise downward their estimation of the Gipper. It's completely inconvenient to Ajami's narrative, but it's worth remembering that by the summer of 1992, just 24 percent of Americans said their country was better off because of the Reagan years, while 40 percent said it was worse off -- and that more Americans (48 percent) viewed Reagan unfavorable than favorably (46 percent). "Deep and true" bond, indeed.
Another day , another right-wing conservative nut talking out both sides of his two faces- Stimulus hypocrite Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) attends groundbreaking for health clinic funded by the Obama economic stimulus.
