perfidy

Buckethead, dude, I think he's got you on Thatcher. Whatta beast.

Mike is correct in pointing out that all heroes have feet of clay, but I'm gonna poke, poke, poke, at the hornets' nest by claiming that Reagan and Thatcher won the cold war exactly because they forced the USSR to stop, think, check their wallets, and put the brakes to what Stalin had set rolling. Also, it doesn't hurt that Gorbachev was a second-generation Party member, the first Premier without direct ties to the Revolution.

But let's not bicker and argue about who killed who! I still want to know how Mike resolves Marxist orthodoxy with an evident love of the United States and its ways, and what sages Buckethead is consulting to assert that tax cuts dependably spur the economy (you're not allowed to mention Larry Kudlow).

On that last point, I'm not sure that an extra $4.50 in people's pockets is particularly meaningful for the economy, except for convenience stores, pizza shops and breweries. I'd like to think that the Average American does think of tax cuts as something they can count on, but I'm not so sure. That presupposes that the Average American acts rationally in economic matters, and I have always found that assumption laughable.

Finally, the discussion of the current tax cuts has to eventually come around to the question of massive deficit spending. Where's the wall, how fast are we going, and how long til we hit it? There's a war on, you know.