"... so I said, 'Yankee doodle-dandy THIS, motherfucker!"

History does not reveal what joke Queen Elizabeth II made at this 1983 state dinner. But Ronald Reagan's enjoyment of it is giving me ideas.

Hall of Shame: Ronald Reagan

The year was 1961, and Ronald Reagan concluded a speech by warning of something so dire, liberty was about to become an endangered species. This menace had to be stopped!

“If I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

What was the menace? Medicare. Yep, the program that provides aid to the elderly. And Reagan hated it so much, he starred in anti-Medicare infomercials for four years!

History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme!

NPR has an interesting piece that takes a look back at American politics. Back in the 1930s, Republicans loathed Social Security when it became law in the 1930s. Here's GOP presidential candidate Alf Landon:

“This is the largest tax bill in history, and to call it Social Security is a fraud on the working man.”

Almost thirty years later, Medicare and Medicaid bill passed both houses of Congress in 1965, when Democrats held big majorities. John Dingle remembers wielding the gavel for the House vote.

"Medicare passed … only after [the Republicans] did everything that they could to kill it."

Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan REALLY tried to kill the Medicare program. Four years before the elderly health care plan became law, Reagan was featured in an infomercial:

“Behind [this program] will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until one day, as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?