nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:15:38 -0700

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nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:26:40 -0700

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Wonder Wheels, Coney Island

nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:06:15 -0700

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Deficit spending for war profiteering and for tax cuts for millionaires is okay. Deficit spending to revitalize the economy, improve public schools, repair bridges and roads is bad. I don't get it.

nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:02:35 -0700

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Fogger. Verrazano Narrows Bridge, Brooklyn, New York.

nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:35:55 -0700

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nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 08:09:59 -0800

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I'm A Stranger Here Myself Rockefeller Center, NYC

Dear Leader

nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:35:19 -0700

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April 15, 2009 Protesters rally at a Tea Party in lower Manhattan to protest President Obama's tax policies.

Ronald Reagan — America's greatest actor.

President Ronald Reagan was able to create a faux-populism, in large part by appealing to a racist working class, getting them to vote against their own best economic interests (trickle down, tax cuts for the rich). This allowed Reagan to shrink the middle class and make the wealthy much richer and in the process his constituents allowed him to deregulate businesses, appoint pro-corporate, right wing judges, shrink government to the point of making it completely inept; and give public land to mining and oil companies to exploit; I could go on and on. Yet, for the working man Reagan had no sympathy: in 1981 he fired 11,345 union workers (air traffic controllers seeking better working conditions, better pay and a 32-hour work week).

President George W. Bush, a great admirer of Reagan, played the same game and took wedge issues even further. Once again, racism played a part, along with fear-mongering: fear of homosexuals; fear of science; fear of immigrants; fear of mushroom clouds. These tactics gave the conservative movement complete control for six of the eight years of the Bush administration in which they made the rich much richer, deregulated business, appointed pro-corporate right-wing judges and so on. And republican voters once again voted against their own best economic interest (tax cuts for the rich).

More on Reagan and racism here:

Innocent Mistakes by Paul Krugman

So there’s a campaign on to exonerate Ronald Reagan from the charge that he deliberately made use of Nixon’s Southern strategy. When he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1980, the town where the civil rights workers had been murdered, and declared that “I believe in states’ rights,” he didn’t mean to signal support for white racists. It was all just an innocent mistake.

Indeed, you do really have to feel sorry for Reagan. He just kept making those innocent mistakes.

When he went on about the welfare queen driving her Cadillac, and kept repeating the story years after it had been debunked, some people thought he was engaging in race-baiting. But it was all just an innocent mistake.

When, in 1976, he talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, he didn’t mean to play into racial hostility. True, as The New York Times reported:

"The ex-Governor has used the grocery-line illustration before, but in states like New Hampshire where there is scant black population, he has never used the expression 'young buck,' which, to whites in the South, generally denotes a large black man."
But the appearance that Reagan was playing to Southern prejudice was just an innocent mistake.

Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South,” he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake.

In 1982, when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating, he had no idea that the issue was so racially charged. It was all an innocent mistake.

And the next year, when Reagan fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission, it wasn’t intended as a gesture of support to Southern whites. It was all an innocent mistake.

Poor Reagan. He just kept on making those innocent mistakes, again and again and again.

PS: It has been pointed out to me that Reagan opposed making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday, giving in only when Congress passed a law creating the holiday by a veto-proof majority. But he really didn’t mean to disrespect the civil rights movement - it was just an innocent mistake.

nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:27:05 -0800

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nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 13:35:19 -0700

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nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 06:26:27 -0800

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I Now Pronounce You Consumer and Wife Sixth Avenue, NYC

nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 06:35:58 -0800

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Sixth Avenue, NYC

It's Lonely at the Top

nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 08:09:59 -0800

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oh shit

nobody@flickr.com (* raymond) — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 10:12:43 -0700

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Uploads from * raymond, with geodata

Dear Leader

It's Lonely at the Top

oh shit