Ronald Reagan Reality Check

With the death of the 40th president of the United States there will be every attempt to place him in the company of the truly great presidents this republic has had. I'm sure that some wingnut somewhere will attempt to rename the earth itself after him.
He certainly was the begining of all that is wrong with this noble republic today including the moronic Reagan clone currently residing in the White House. The SCLM is non stop flowery eulogies.
I will leave the specifics of his horrible legacy to Bilmon as he dose it much better than I could. It is a long read but complete and worthwhile, no blockquotes here, just read the entire thing.
I will leave the emotions to Magpie over at Pacific Views; Ronald Reagan: A crankier view, with the understanding that November is far to important for Democrats to alienate a large portion of the population with Reagan bashing.

We can only hope that there will be another death this year with the defeat of the 43rd president, George Walker Bush, the death of the Reagan era.
Update
Juan Cole has a good run down on the "gipper". One short snippet from it:

Reagan had an ability to project a kindly image, and was well liked personally by virtually everyone who knew him, apparently. But it always struck me that he was a mean man. I remember learning, in the late 1960s, of the impact Michael Harrington's The Other America had had on Johnson's War on Poverty. Harrington demonstrated that in the early 1960s there was still hunger in places like Appalachia, deriving from poverty. It was hard for middle class Americans to believe, and Lyndon Johnson, who represented many poor people himself, was galvanized to take action.

I remember seeing a tape of Reagan speaking in California from that era. He said that he had heard that some asserted there was hunger in America. He said it sarcastically. He said, "Sure there is; they're dieting!" or words to that effect. This handsome Hollywood millionnaire making fun of people so poor they sometimes went to bed hungry seemed to me monstrous. I remember his wealthy audience of suburbanites going wild with laughter and applause. I am still not entirely sure what was going on there. Did they think Harrington's and similar studies were lies? Did they blame the poor for being poor, and resent demands on them in the form of a few tax dollars, to address their hunger?