So Ronald Reagan is dead and is suddenly the Greatest President Who Ever Lived. Sorry, folks, I ain't buying it.

I spent my entire early adulthood loathing this man and everything he stood for, the mad ativism of the religious right his ilk gave rise to, the revolting collaboration with an honor roll of the bloodthirstiest criminals of the last quarter-century -- Marcus, Pinochet, Saddam Hussein himself, and no less than Osama bin Laden; and the phony fiscal policies which created phantom economic growth while plunging this nation into trillions and trillions of dollars in debt.

The grotesque mischaracterization of this doddering old figurehead as some kind of beloved father to the nation is revolting in the extreme. With all due respect to his family, I will not miss him, not one little bit.

Here is an eloquent summary of Reagan's crimes. The tab is still being paid today -- and not by Reagan's philosophical progeny, not just by the poor, the gay, the minorities whom Reagan and the filthy swine he gathered around him disdained, but by you and me and everyone else.