as many others (wiser than myself) have suggested:

its most fitting to put St. Ronnie's mug on the Treasury Bill. Every time we run up debt, he'll be on the paper.

Is the collective memory of the American people that short? I remember not too long ago reading about how he was already senile when he was in office. The scandals, the deficit, Star Wars, falling asleep during meetings. All in all a BAD president.

Thanks to Reaganomics, a $10 bill is worth about a dime. So in a way, it's a kind of appropriate gesture.

drew, or they could just cover the bill with voodoo symbols, given reagan's economic policies...better yet, monkeys to represent bonzo?

My God, the body isn't even cold and already the Repugnants are trying to politicize his death and memory. They've already named an airport after the geezer. What more do they want.

I honestly believe there should be a prohibition on honoring anyone until at least 50 years has passed since his/her death. It's rather unseemly to see all the politicos jockeying for conservative brownie points as they dream up new ways to honor the man.

Don't be surprised if you find his wrinkly visage on Mount Rushmore. Or maybe they're saving that for the current simpleton in office.

I agree with Jen and Brian. A. Hamilton, late of Bank Street, should not be treated so shabbily.

And Drew, do not lose heart... the backlash has already started and who knows where it will be by Friday. They should have gotten RR in the ground while the getting was good, rather than drag this out for six days.

I just think a lot of us have a hard time with even the thought of honoring in such a widespread manner the person who made sure that AIDS would become this generation's plague through his hatred and inaction. For me, that trumps just about everything else (though I will give him credit for aiding glasnost along.)

As for Katie Couric's question about comparisons b/t Reagan and Bush, she's not the first one. Ed Gillespie, chair of the RNC, was quoted yesterday as saying something along the lines of "the similarities are there; I don't know how you miss them." Uh, yeah, just keep playing back Reagan's D-Day speech from '84 and compare it to GWB's. At least Reagan was an actor and could play the part. Watching GW is liking watching my second grade niece auditioning for a part in the school play.

Reagan made sure AIDS was this generation's plague? What kind of crap is that? Do you blame the president when smokers get lung cancer? Reagan didn't encourage anyone to hang out at bath houses and have sex with strangers. And our $10 bills are a lot more valuable because of him. Find a successful Democrat or Republican who advocates pre-1980 fiscal policies.

Reagan cut the CDC budget and did not approve of funding AIDS research until 1986.

Yeah, Reagan didn't encourage anyone to hang out in bath houses and have sex with strangers. Nor did he decide against blood testing before giving donor blood to a patient, and he didn't encourage sex without condoms either. In fact, he just IGNORED THE WHOLE FUCKING THING while it spread like wildfire. So of course we shouldn't blame him for just acting like the problem wasn't there while it became an epidemic, how could that be his fault? And nola, while you might not find anyone who advocates pre-1980 fiscal policies, you probably won't find any thinking person who advocates Reagan's voodoo economics. Oh, wait, there are few, they're the ones who run the country, and have handed us a massive Reagan-style deficit! Like I said, you won't find any THINKING person who advocates Reaganomics...the sooner the posthumous fellatio ends, the better, and we can all try to forget that we elected a hack actor turned irresponsible politician to the highest office in the country.

Oh, and Jake--that would exclude the $8 million of AIDS research funding in 1982, the $44 million in 1983, the $103 million in 1984, and the $205 million in 1985. Increases of 450%, 134%, and 99% for each of those years.

Get your facts straight.

I'm not that excited about being a big Reagan defender, because I'm kind of ambivalent about his record, but there's a lot of misinformation here. He spoke about AIDS in 1985, the 4th year of his first presidency (not the 6th or 7th), and there is no evidence for that "live by the sword/die by the sword" quote.

So it only took Reagan four years to speak about AIDS? Assuming that you're correct, how is that tangibly different than waiting to speak about it two years later?

And whether he made the comment or not, his actions, or lack thereof, speak much more loudly than anything he ever said in one of his perfunctory speeches or an aside to his wife/aides.

Reagan was a vile person and I will not be joining anyone on their trip down false-memory lane.

I mean, Nola.

Ronnie on our money. Ha! That's about as logical as naming an airport after him after he fired all striking air controllers.

Reagan never held a press conference to warn us against jumping off bridges, either. AIDS receieved huge media attention from day one. The connection between its spread and promiscuous behavior was known by all, especially the bath house crowd. Are we supposed to believe that people were having unprotected sex because Reagan didn't tell them to stop? And Reagan never "intimated" anything negative about AIDS sufferers. Stop getting your history from Barbara Streisand. As for economics, you can call it Reaganomics or Voodoo Economics if you like, but both parties support lower taxes and a relatively free market.

Wow; how'd the Freepers find Gothamist? I figured that they avoid the nasty liberal New York in cyberspace just like they go in the real world. Hey, during the convention, y'all should rename it Gomorrahist. We can ask republicans we've only known for 30 seconds to have sex with us, and pay for the bath house with a sawbuck. But it'll be safe, because of everything Reagan did; think about how much worse AIDS would have been if it weren't for him.

msq-

"thank you for those who are getting the RIGHT reagan stats"

those stats are "right" indeed. Did you mean that as a pun?

I think a 'Teddy 10' is a better option.

One of the most curious things about this site is the strange low grade conservatism of the author(s), which as often as not, seems naive and unaware of itself. Reagan had "stature." Hmm. Well, to some people sure. He also traded arms for hostages in violation of the...um...U.S. Constitution. Remember Benjamin Linder? The guy the Contras (the "Moral equivalent of the founding fathers" as Dutch put it) shot in the head for the mighty crime of teaching English in Nicaragua? Remember what Reagan and Co. said about that? ("He had it coming.") Anyway, lest you forget, or perhaps in the case of Gothamist, in case you never knew, read Hitchens today on Slate for a few choice reminders of this man's "stature." Jeesh.

This is why Sharpies were invented.

If this happens, I'll be writing "Iran-Contra" on every $10 I get.

Actually, the National Review article says:
President Reagan's February 6, 1986 State of the Union address included this specific passage where he says the word "AIDS" five times: "We will continue, as a high priority, the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this major epidemic public health threat. The number of AIDS cases is expected to increase. While there are hopes for drugs and vaccines against AIDS, none is immediately at hand. Consequently, efforts should focus on prevention, to inform and to lower risks of further transmission of the AIDS virus. To this end, I am asking the Surgeon General to prepare a report to the American people on AIDS."

Don't know where they got that from or if it was willful misattribution but the difference between a nationally televised State of the Union is very different from a Budget Message to Congress (so many people tune in for that!).

The CDC under Reagan did yeoman work on AIDS research, and also under Reagan people with AIDS were afforded protection so that they could remain in school, etc. Are you people so saturated by the media mentality that you judge what someone says as more important than what they do or don't do? Castro - the left's hero - locked up Cuba's AIDS patients in forced isolation, even after it became apparent that communicability was limited. Can you imagine the howling today if Reagan had decided to quarantine AIDS patients, given all the whining about how he didn't talk about them in public? Haha.

Its too limiting to focus on the AIDS thing, Reagan was severely deficient in many other ways, and the right wing controlled media has hyped him and created a false legend about how great he was since Bush lost his re-election to Clinton. Theyve been waiting for his death for 14 years to pull this kind of shit.

Six years into Reagan's presidency, Reaganomics had "accomplished" quite a bit: doubled the national debt, caused the S&L crisis, and nearly wrecked the financial system. Economic growth indices -- GDP, jobs, revenues -- were all positive when Carter left office. All plunged after Reagan policies took effect.

Reagan didn't cure inflation, the main economic problem during the Carter years. Carter's Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker tried when he raised interest rates. That's the opposite of what Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has done to keep inflation low.

Carter's policies and people fought inflation, but maintained real growth. On the other hand, Reagan's policies helped cause the worst recession since the Great Depression: two bleak years with nearly double-digit unemployment! Reaganomics failed in less than a year, and it took an entire second year for the economy to recover from the failure.

Another major myth: Reagan cut taxes on all Americans, and that led to a great expansion.

Here's the truth: the total federal tax burden increased during the Reagan years, and most Americans paid more in taxes after Reagan than before. The "Reagan Recovery" was unremarkable. It looks great only contrasted against the dismal Reagan Recession -- but it had nothing to do with Supply Side voodoo.

With a red ink explosion -- $300 BILLION deficits looming as far as the eye could see -- GOP Senators, notably including Bob Dole, led the way on tax hikes. The economy enjoyed its recovery only after total tax increases larger than the total tax cuts were implemented. Most importantly, average annual GDP growth during the Reagan 80s was lower than during the Clinton 90s or the JFK-LBJ 60s!

Here's the biggest myth of them all: Ronald Reagan won the "Cold War".

In reality, Reagan did nothing to bring down the Soviet Union.

By 1980, the Soviet Union was trying to cut its own defense spending. Reagan made it harder for them to do so. In fact, Reagan increased the possibility of a nuclear war because he was -- frankly, and sadly -- senile. He thought we could actually recall submarine-launched nuclear missiles (talk about a Reagan myth), and bullied the Soviets to highest alert several times.

Critically, Reagan never even tried to bring down the Soviet Union.

Wasteful overspending on defense didn't end the Soviet Union. In fact, it played into the hands of authoritarian "Communist" hard-liners in the Kremlin. Reagan thought the Soviet Union was more powerful than we were. He was trying to close what he called "the window of vulnerability."

Here's the truth: we'd already won the Cold War before Reagan took office. All Reagan needed to do was continue the tried-and-true containment policies Harry S. Truman began and all subsequent presidents employed. The Soviet Union was Collapsing from within. The CIA actually told this to Reagan as he took office.

Here's an example: the Soviet Union military couldn't deal with a weak state on its own border, the poor, undermanned Afghanistan. Most of the Soviets' military might had to make sure its "allies" in the Warsaw Pact and subjects along the South Asian front didn't revolt. Even Richard Nixon told Reagan he could balance the budget with big defense cuts.

Reagan ignored this, and wrecked our budget.

We didn't have to increase weapons spending, but Reagan didn't care. He ran away from summits with the dying old-guard Soviets, and the new-style "glasnost" leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev baffled the witless Reagan and his closed-minded extremist advisors.

Maggie Thatcher finally cajoled the Gipper into meeting Gorby, and Gorby cleaned Reagan's clock. Reagan's hard-right "handlers" nearly had to drag Reagan out of the room before he signed away our entire nuclear deterrent. Reagan -- and the planet -- was lucky Gorbachev sought genuine and stable peace. Had Yuri Andropov's health held, Reagan's "jokes" and gaffes might have caused World War III.

Eventually Reagan even gave Gorbachev his seal of approval. Visiting Moscow before the August Coup, Reagan said the Soviet Union was no longer the "Evil Empire." He predicted his friend Gorbachev would lead the Soviet Union for many years to come.

As usual, Reagan was wrong. A few months later, disgruntled military officers kidnapped Gorbachev, throwing him out of power forever. Reagan remained disengaged: nothing he did caused the coup, and nothing he did made the Soviet military support Boris Yeltsin over their superiors.

We're all fortunate things happened as they did -- but once again, Reagan did nothing to make this fluke more likely.

All this is vintage Reagan. Reagan took credit for others' hard word and hard choices, and blamed them for his failures. Reagan even blamed Jimmy Carter for Reagan's foolish, fatal, and reckless decision to leave 243 Marines stationed in Beirut, helpless and unguarded.

Reagan hired over 100 crooks to run our government, and broke several laws himself. His policies were almost uniformly self-defeating, wrong-headed, immoral and unfair.

Reagan was an actor playing the part of the president. He was style over substance; lucky, not good.

And once the myths are stripped from the "legacy", the truth becomes obvious: Reagan was by far the most overrated man in American history.

Hater - you're wrong on nearly every point, but I don't have time to contest them all. Your comparison of Volcker and Greenspan, for instance, is incoherent and suggests that you have no grasp of basic monetary policy.

Also, regarding the tax burden, it's true that tax revenues increased during Reagan's term - you count this as an "a-ha!" moment. But the truth is that Reagan's tax policy was aimed at this outcome, and relied on the Laffer Curve. The goal was to increase economic growth and THUS tax revenues by lowering tax rates. You lefties mocked this all through the 80s, even as you complained about Reagan's defense debt. BUT AS HAS BECOME OBVIOUS, Reagan was correct - the lower tax burden spurned economic growth, and the Federal debt crisis predicted by the left never happened - our economy grew so quickly that the government has been able to repay the Reagan era debt easily.

You should stop reading Ted Rall and try a real history textbook.

As far back as the late 1970s, Reagan defended the Argentine military junta while it was engaged in the use of state terror and was “disappearing” tens of thousands of dissidents. Those tactics included barbaric acts such as cutting babies out of pregnant women so the mothers could then be executed while the babies were given to the murderers. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Argentina's Dapper State Terrorist."]

In the 1980s in Guatemala, Reagan aided military regimes that waged scorched-earth campaigns against rural peasants, including genocide against Indian populations. Reagan personally attacked the human rights reports describing atrocities inflicted on hundreds of Mayan villages.

On Dec. 4, 1982, after meeting with Guatemalan dictator Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, Reagan hailed the general as "totally dedicated to democracy" and asserted that Rios Montt's government was "getting a bum rap." [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Reagan & Guatemala's Death Files."]

Tens of thousands more people died at the hands of right-wing security forces in El Salvador and Honduras, while in Nicaragua, Reagan funneled support to the contras, who behaved like a kind of death-squad-in-waiting, committing widespread atrocities against Nicaraguan civilians while funding some operations with cocaine trafficking to the United States. [For details, see Robert Parry's Lost History.]

Another little-noticed part of Reagan’s legacy was his credentialing of a generation of neoconservative operatives, such as Paul Woflowitz, who learned the importance of manipulating intelligence and about managing the perceptions of the American people from the Nicaraguan contra war. As Walter Raymond, Reagan’s chief of public diplomacy, was fond of saying about how to sell the Nicaraguan conflict to the American people: the goal was to “glue black hats” on the leftist Sandinistas and “white hats” on the contras.

typical conservative response.

Yeah, I'm sure Reagan was personally involved in the decision to cut babies out of wombs. He was real big on that. I'm told he actually used to eat baby-guts on toast for breakfast.

It always amuses me when you lefties try to convince people that some conservative president "supported" the Junta in Argentina or "supported" Marcos in the Phillipines, or arranged the assassination against Allende.

There's a concept called "The lesser of two evils". I'm sure if Reagan had his choice, he'd have wiped the slate clean and installed a Jerffersonian democracy in Argentina. But since the presidency of the United States doesn't come with a magic wand, he had to make do and deal with the conditions that were down there.

harDCore - You have no idea what you're talking about. Iran-Contra MIGHT have been a minor violation of the "Boland Amendment" - a Congressional funding provision, but Reagan did it to achieve two worthy foreign-policy ends - freeing hostages and financing anti-communist freedom fighters in Nicaragua (who eventually declared victory when free elections were held). Reagan betrayed nothing. And the Sandanistas was the Communist dictatorship in Nicaragua - John Kerry supported them but Reagan did not.

Also, I'm not sure what Reagan's position on the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was, but those 1960s laws generally passed because of Republican