HELIOLITH

Ray Charles, father of soul music, dies at 73 and is arguably, a far more worthy being to grieve for than our fallen actor who seemed to live by his infamous Freudian slip “Facts are stupid things.” Forgotten how bad he was? Read this list of 66 unflattering this about Reagan! Or better yet, this excerpt from a Chomsky interview: “Reagan’s duty was to smile, to read from the teleprompter in a pleasant voice, tell a few jokes, and keep the audience properly bemused.”

It astounds me the way history is re-written to actually credit the man with positive changes. Kevin Drum sums it up well. In his entry entitled “Reagan and Bush,” he writes “When it comes to the high art of ignoring the real world in favor of a fantasy world of your own making, Ronald Reagan truly is the father of modern conservatism.”