From: radioacti...@gmail.com   
      
   Come on, Louis, as one of your admiringly regular readers, I know you're   
   smarter than your Reagan-takedown declaration suggests.   
      
   Ronald Wilson Reagan had MANY charms--not at all incidentally including what   
   Newsweek's November 1980 cover declared "that winning smile"--but if RWR's   
   two-term Presidency had ONLY achieved this, his place in history was assured,   
   regardless of your    
   ideology:   
      
   Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot--along with steadfast assistance   
   from Maggie Thatcher and serious behind-the-throne prodding by St. John Paul   
   II, two MASSIVE assists, plus of course what Thatcher famously said about   
   being able to "do    
   business with" Gorbachev, a Stalin successor clearly cut from new political   
   cloth.   
      
   This was arguably as great an achievement as winning World War II, Louis.    
   (And the sad fact that Putin is now widely recognized as a USSR-nostalgic   
   despot doesn't alter that a whit.)   
      
   Oh, and Merry New Year to you and every alt-obit poster or reader.   
      
   BRYAN STYBLE/Florida   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)