A last comment about Reagan. While watching the funeral procession get going (all networks had that rather than news), I heard a significant remark by Richard Reeves, who is writing a new biography of Reagan. He said that one of the things which most suprised him was that Reagan had no friends, only acquaintances and employees. Almost all of those he interviewed said they had absolutely no contact after he left office. He said some were very emotional about that fact. Reagan was apparently all facade; and he did that role exceptionally well.
I have been surfing the web a little and one aspect of it has suprised me: the amazing number of "let it all hang out" websites. Apparently many (most?) Generation Xers , see no particular need for personal privacy and are not disturbed by voyeurism as long as they remain more-or-less anonymous. I expect that ties in with another phenomenon, that of almost total self-absorption and self-reference. They are like three-year-olds (or cats) in some respects; if it doesn't concern them, it doesn't really exist.
This doesn't mean they are not socially concerned, just that they focus on themselves, even in the social activism framework. This might explain why so many of them support and vote against their best interests. They associate themselves with the most successful, wealthiest candidate and spurn the idea that they are part of the "downtrodden masses", even when they are. This has happened in America in the past, notably during the post Civil War era when the country was turned over to the damnest bunch of crooks we've ever had. They were elected and re-elected in spite of scandal after scandal.

Today Ronald Reagan, who was probably the luckiest president America ever had, heads up the news. He is remembered for his determination and optimism and is given some credit for ending the cold war even though it was mostly Russia's economic collapse and Gorbachev's couragious defiance of the Communist old guard that was mostly responsible. But Reagan did keep the pressure on and was willing to compromise when it did not affect our national security.
Reagan realized his dream of ending the cold war with no major conflict or loss of life and the scandals of his terms in office (Iran-contra, Bierut, The Challanger, etc) are mostly ignored except by those who were affected. Reagan was apparently not directly envolved, or at least said he didn't remember being.
I was no fan of Reagan's but I must admit he presided over one of the most dramatic periods of world history from which the U.S. emerged the undisputed world leader. I expect he will be viewed favorably by future historians.

I'm concerned about the United States of America. It seems to me that this current election has polarized our country more than any in the past 100 years, including the 1964 Johnson vs Goldwater slugfest.
A major part of this division and election campaign is the Iraq War; why we're fighting it, whether we should be, and how we're going to get out of this mess without it turning into another Viet Nam.
As an over-aged veteran whose family has a very long history of military service (my father, mother, brother,uncle and aunt are all buried in national cemeteries), I am especially concerned about the treatment of members of our armed forces.
In my opinion they have been placed in harm's way for what seems to be basically a misguided political reason without proper leadership or training. By any rational analysis, the Iraq war is a fiasco which probably never should have happened and was certainly very poorly planned, sloppily carried out, and has suffered from terrible leadership from the president right on down to the sergeant in charge of those idiots at Abu Ghraib prison.
The latest straw (announced today) is the cancellation of discharges of some of those serving in Iraq who thought their term of enlistment contract meant what it said. That sort of shoots down the idea of a "volunteer army" but I guess the pentagon had to do this because national guard enlistments are way down.
If you read warblogs from Irag, the troops who write them seem to be still supporting Bush,Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co. Why, I don't know. I guess they figure they have to put some faith in the people who put them there or it makes their mission kind of meaningless. I'm sure it has occured to them that the current news about Chalabi and his ties with Iran, sort of suggests that Iranian intelligence fed Chalabi untrue info about Sadam's WMDs which he in turn fed to his buddies in the White House, including Dick Cheney. To be fair to Chalabi, he never made any secret of his Iranian ties and probably should have been handled with a 10-foot pole, but he wasn't.

This site will be mostly Rants, Comments, and Links.
I've done a good many different things and have an opinion about almost everything.
I've been a Merchant Seaman, a Sailor (sailboat sailor), an Army Sargent, a Driving instructor, a Teacher of Navigation, Small Boat Handling, Math, History, Sociology, and Social Psychology at the High School, Community College and University level, and have trained and supervised beginning HS teachers.
Since I retired, I've become a pretty good watercolor painter. I've been using Apple computers since the early '80s.
This blog is named in honor of a Cape Cod Catboat we once owned. We've had many boats, but this was our favorite.