Reagan's deficits and accumulated debt would have been far greater but for the Democratic Congress.  Once the 1981 tax cuts were passed and resulted in an ocean of red ink, the Democratic Congress passed and forced Reagan to sign a large tax increase recouping over half the loss of revenue. Reagan's debt mountain would have been as big as Bush's if the Republicans had been in charge.  Democrats saved Reagan from the worst damage his stupidity could have inflicted.  Pity they weren't as strong to counterbalance Bush's idiocy.

As Yglesias bluntly explained it, “the idea, basically, is to scare the goyim who figure that while liberal Jews can take the heat, they probably can’t, and had best just avoid talking about the whole thing.” Yglesias is on to something important here, though the situation is more complicated than he described. Both Jews and gentiles have been raising the volume of discussion about the American-Israeli relationship and Israeli policies. On the Jewish side, there is a profusion of important peace-oriented websites. The explosion of interest in the Walt-Mearsheimer essay and Jimmy Carter’s book evince a Christian awakening of the Mideast’s critical importance. The perilous present geopolitical context explains this: a great many people wouldn’t risk the opprobrium of the lobby for the sake of the Palestinians, who often wage their struggle far less impressively than one might wish. But letting the lobby influence American foreign policy toward Iraq raises the stakes mightily. Allowing Bibi Netanyahu and his American allies to call the tune of U.S. policy toward Iran is far too much to bear.