Republican presidents of my lifetime.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

8. The Last Decent Republican President (Eisenhower) Left Office 12 Years Before I Was Born

Ever since then, it's been a huge ball of shit rolling down a hill of shit and getting bigger and bigger as it goes.

It's been fun recently because my 16-year-old son has been learning about the Reagan/Bush years in his high school history class and I've been able to fill in some of the gaps for him. His class was surprisingly critical of Reagan (I expected them to give him the "Saint Ronnie" treatment, but they really didn't), although I did have to give him more details about what Iran-Contra was all about.

I also had fun explaining to him about how Bush installed Saddam Hussein as the leader of Iraq in order to fight our "enemies" in Iran and then decided we didn't like him later. And about how our CIA trained Osama Bin Laden to fight against HIM because we decided we didn't like him anymore. And about how he alerted Bush he was going to invade Kuwait, got Bush's OK to do it, and then had Bush declare war on him after he did it. The Iraq War started during my freshman year of college, so you can imagine the impact it had on me, having just turned 18 years old and facing the possibility that the draft would be reinstated.