Except, malcontent....you post text related inauguration.....we have none this year.

OK, last year.   I missed it by a month or so.

Hi Mal

I'm undecided there.

"Not everyone agree with this tribute to Reagan, among them the historian C. Vann Woodward who said of Iran-Contra that he knew of "nothing comparable with this magnitude of irresponsibility and incompetence." Morley Safer said of the late President, "I don't think history has any reason to be kind to him."

 Reagan had some great moments true, but I'd have given one to Gorbachev. He reformed Russian theology, ideology, and religious foreground. He appeased his people and took down the iron curtain, not Reagan. The dominoes began to fall during the height of the cold war. Their fall was inevitable due to expansive poverty, crime, gangs, surmounting debt, complete chaos, and the sheer will of the people in a centuries old oppression, hence a reunified Germany and several independent states. Reagan scared the snot outta them with his defunct, massively expensive, and nonproductive SDI:::STARWARS program. It was a potentially dangerous game but did inflict psychological casualties within Russian Parliament. The perception that the US was in a no holds bared stance, threatened global nuclear build-up and World War number three, had Russia taken a dimmer view. But thankfully, it ended in talks over a table rather than on the battle field.

He obviously assisted Gorby in that transition, but the collapse of the doomed communism in Russia started long before Reagan even looked at the presidency. Though Regan was a champion of anticommunism since 1950:::in that over all situation I'd give it to Mikhail G. instead.

Lucy