Well, it has been a fun week in political circles, hasn't it? The White House, in its never-ending quest to turn the Presidency into a cheesy straight-to-TV movie has spent much of the last few days quietly retreating away from some of the more outlandish claims of last week's Thanksgiving surprise. I can't see what possessed them to have the President wandering around with a false Turkey; surely they should have known that it'd look a bit silly when they were inevitably found out, hmm? Then there's the detail about how Air Force One was spotted by a British Airways 747 pilot when it was flying to Iraq. The first version of the story had the pilot radioing AF1 asking whether it really was the President's plane. Only British Airways denied such a conversation ever took place. The second version of the story had the pilot radioing London Air Traffic Control. British Airways denied this also. At the moment, we're up to the third version, which is some guy with a British accent radioed in to London ATC. Yes, it's only a little thing, but the story was fine enough as it was: Bush visits Iraq with only a few video cameras and reporters. There was no need to add embellishments to an already quite impressive story/PR stunt.

Back in California, the Democrat-controlled Legislature has turned its nose up at Governor Schwarzenegger's attempt to move California's debts to a bigger credit card (or $15bn in a new bond issue, if you prefer). They also wen't too pleased at his proposed $3.8bn budget cuts that would have cut back on education and medical spending. The Governor has vowed to go over the Legislature's heads and hold a referendum next November (remember guys, you only have to wait 90 days before you can start the recall process all. over. again.).

And finally from American shores, the Ronald Reagan Dime Act, wherein a group of Republicans with far too much time on their hands want to replace the image of the man who solved the banking crisis, began the New Deal, led America to victory in World War Two, and who founded the March of Dimes, with a man who most likely lied to congress, sold arms to both Iraq and Iran, fired striking air-traffic controllers, loosened anti-trust law to protect multinational corporations, created the situation for the S&L disaster, and landed America with a multi-trillion dollar debt by the time he left office. Well, that makes sense.

Back home, two things of note: Nobody likes Mr. Blair at the moment. The new idea for charging students for attending university (£3,000/per year maximum, payable only after graduation and after the student is earning more than £15,000/year, plus the re-introduction of the maintenance grant) are quite sensible, considering that British universities are losing a lot of money at the moment under the current system, and it's still rather cheap when compared to, say, American-style charging. But nobody wants to hear that; instead we just have lots of student groups and the Conservatives shouting at Blair, without coming up with much of an alternative.

Secondly: George Galloway is a smug, pompous man, and it does the peace movement no good to have someone like that as one of their main proponents.

UPDATE: In the interests of full disclosure (and because I felt bad about it after talking with Laura): FDR wasn't what you would call a saint, either. Trying to pack the Supreme Court, hiding the extent of his illness, using the New Deal for patronage purposes, his feud with Robert Moses which caused problems in New York, and being President during the Japanese Interment. (I'm leaving out the PETA information because it's not clear how long it has been going on for, and whether FDR had any involvement aside from setting up the fund in the first place)

I'm struggling to think about positive things about Reagan. I'm willing to entertain the notion that he, along with Gorbachev, was one of the architects of eventual peace between Russia and the USA, although it didn't happen until well into George Bush's Presidency. Feel free to add your ideas in the comment section, answering the question: what did Reagan ever do for us, anyway?