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" (Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog&amp;#039;s Second-Favorite Canadian) In a week in which we all were trapped in an endless performance of Bad History Theater, and in which we were told (endlessly) that the president&amp;#039;s main problem was his failure to make nicey-nice with everyone in Jim VandeHei&amp;#039;s social circle, I found it clarifying to read a little bit of the late Walter Karp&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;The Reagan Revolution And Its Democratic Friends,&amp;quot; his real-time evisceration of what has come down to us through history as the ballad of what Digby always refers to as TipnRonnie. Karp fairly well demolishes the notion that the collaboration of old Tip and older Ronnie was anything but utterly destructive to any hope for the rise of a genuine progressive response to what the Reaganauts had in mind, which set us all on the dismal path on which we continue to walk. Karp excoriates O&amp;#039;Neill and the Democratic congressional leadership \u2014 especially that corrupt old fool, Dan Rostenkowski \u2014 for taking a dive during Reagan&amp;#039;s first year in office, when the latter proposed a lunatic budget and was flirting with historic unpopularity. &amp;quot;For Democratic leaders,&amp;quot; Karp writes, &amp;quot;the Reagan Revolution was seen as no opportunity at all...The problem that Reagan&amp;#039;s program posed for the erstwhile party of the people was not how to oppose its folly and favoritism, but how to shepherd it through Congress without awakening anybody...Reagan&amp;#039;s brutal class legislation would be turned by glozing Democrats into a benign question of fairness, and then &amp;#039;fairness.&amp;quot; Reagan, too would be transformed \u2014 from a president who had won an election over a weak opponent with 50.7 percent of the vote into the political equivalent of the great god Juggernaut. &amp;quot;Such is the &amp;#039;magic&amp;#039; of Ronald Reagan,&amp;quot; Karp concludes. &amp;quot;Pull back the curtain and you find Democrats working all the levers.&amp;quot; &amp;#039;Twas ever thus. OK, so I saw the new Star Trek movie the other night, and it&amp;#039;s not often you can see an entire franchise unspool in the last 45 minutes of a single film. I was a fan of the first film of the reboot, but I&amp;#039;d like the Spock-Uhura romance to go away now. (Vulcan courtship used to be a helluva lot more interesting.) Also, while it&amp;#039;s nice to see them still wearing the multi-hued PJ tops on duty, when did Starfleet start buying its dress uniforms from the North Korean army? Some friends of mine have a daughter graduating from Tulane this weekend. And, first of all, there&amp;#039;s beer! Also, the honorary degrees? Allen Toussaint and Dr. John. The speaker? The Dalai Lama, who may have walked on actual gilded splinters in his time. Coolest. Graduation. Ever. I always noted the lack of Soviet Russians in northern Maine. Roman Abramovich, who owns Chelsea in the Premier League, happens to own a yacht called the Eclipse, of which I learned only this week. First of all, the damned thing is two-thirds the size the Bismarck was. CNBC reports that Abramovich is most likely using the yacht as an alternative to a hotel or private residence as it offers more room for his numerous security staff and entourage. As we&amp;#039;ve reported in the past, Eclipse also has many protective features such as a missile defense system, armor plating, bullet-proof windows and a laser shield system designed to deter paparazzi. The yacht also has a submarine, discotheque, private cinema, two swimming pools and two helipads. I think the laser shield paparazzi deterrent thing is my favorite part. Does it just make it impossible to photograph the yacht, or does it vaporize them where they stand? I could go either way on that one. I&amp;#039;ll be back Monday with what I am sure will be scandal-sodden gobshitery. Stay safe and play nice, ya bastids, or I&amp;#039;m coming to your house and we&amp;#039;re going to have to throw down with the ahn&amp;#039;whoon. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18547/live-long-and-prosper-this-weekend/>