Mav,

Don't feel sorry about the Cold War. W's doing his best to start it up again. Even the rhetoric hasn't changed much since the Actor's heyday. But then, thanks to Bush, neither have the players.

The need for enemies and heroes and simple explanations dominates our society. It makes life so much easier to pick a good guy, a bad guy and praise or blame them. Facts, history, economic theory, all that just take too much time to learn. And you have to actually think about it. So much easier to rationalize away the nasty facts that don't fit. (No matter where you fit on the political spectrum)

The Soviet Union had been crumbling for a long time. The Actor gets credit for hastening the fall.

He also needs to accept the blame for his support of petty dictators who were as guilty of genocide as any of your "favorites".

Looking at various economic indicators, the 80's was a worse decade than the 70's or the 90's. Who gets credit and who gets blame? In Reagan's first real budget, he got Congress to pass TEFRA and said, at the time, that he now had all the tools necessary to fix the economy. He didn't.

The Actor was the hero everyone wanted. Hero's have to screw up big time before the image starts to tarnish. It happens quicker these days because facts and opinions get disseminated faster.

Clinton in the 90's didn't cause the expansion. Neither did Greenspan. And neither will Bush during his term. But our economy is international. At best, governments can moderate the peaks and valleys.

Of the $5.6 trillion projected surplus over the next 10 years (and that figure assumed continued economic growth and significant pay down of the national debt) all but $1.9 trillion is earmarked for things like the social security trust fund. So the $1.6 trillion tax cut comes out of that. Which leaves a $300 billion hedge against those little blips that haunt our economic system. Not what I'd call prudent, aside from the equity issues that have been raised.

BTW, under the Bush plan, W and Laura will get a $20K tax break the first year and by 2006 it'll be up to $100k. Its also estimated that the tax break going to the richest 1% would pay for the medicare prescription program. It's a question of values: Helping senior citizens get the medicine they need to stay alive or picking up that Renoir for the library at the Hamptons. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Regards

John