October 17, 2026: The Week in Review

On Monday, we break into book two of this mahoosive treatise of work on Ronald Reagan. Last week we finished the early years and his radio-film-labor-new dealer-red scare-anti communist-pro business trend, culminating with his speech "A Time for Choosing". That era ended, and the political transformation began with a ferocity. This week, we began that arc with the first episodes of the first act of the second book.

Monday, October 12: Reagan moved on California like a bitch. He was beginning to get his legs under him and railed on Pat Brown's legacy, promising to slash the size and scope of the Government of the rapidly expanding state of California. He wasn't really successful except in his mind and those of the growing conservative movement:

The Campaign and the Reckoning

A Republican governor and a Democratic Assembly Speaker teamed up to raise the sales tax, the top bracket, and sin taxes all at once. Big government built this one together.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Wednesday, October 14: Later Reagan was effective at helping several single issue voters find and bind themselves to the Republicans, one of them the Second Amendment absolutists. This has been an extremely durable component of the Republican coalition, and Reagan is credited with bringing them fully into the fold.

Alas, Reagan's record on freedom and liberty espoused in the A Time for Choosing speech really didn't map to his governing, either in California, or in Washington. This episode talks about the Mulford act, and its racial origins:

Scared of Your Own Shadow

The NRA helped write California's gun control law in 1967. Forty-nine years later, it took them over a day to comment on a licensed gun owner's death.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Friday, October 16: A two-fer today. First up, Reagan's betrayal of a general agreement on education in the state, part of the Master Plan of 1962 that created the crown jewel of public universities, and that really kicked off the path to the current overpriced university education. All because he hated the hippies at Cal...

The Compact Broken

Reagan's own education adviser said the quiet part out loud: college access needed limiting before it produced "an educated proletariat."

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Second up, as we are now 17 days from the midterms, I really need to back away from all the self-fellating media that is already causing the producers of both Tiger Balm and Ben Gay to work overtime (to address the sore muscles of all the self patting of backs of the Never Trump and resistance media ecosystems, I am retreating into music. This morning I found another gem by the incomparable Béla Fleck with an all-star ensemble of bluegrass icons, and had to share.

Music: Béla Fleck

As we head into the elections, I am trying to lose myself in music. Fortunately, both Youtube and Béla Fleck came to my rescue…

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

From the Shitpost Dude, he had to do his own spin on the immigration reform that Reagan shepherded through in '86, that looked great on paper, but it had an Airbus A380 sized loophole...

Knowingly, man (immigration)

“Knowingly” is the only word the 1986 immigration law needed to fail. The boss didn’t know, the worker didn’t have papers, and nobody got in trouble. Maude has the form.

The Dude ShitpostsJeffery Lebowski

Next week, we are back at it with the Reagan fuckery!