Michael Jackson stands with President Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan on the South Lawn of the White House before the pop star received an award from the president for his contribution to the drunken driving awareness program.

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President Reagan and Nancy Reagan posing with Rock Hudson at White House State Dinner for President De La Madrid of Mexico. 5/15/84 .

You will notice the picture of Rock Hudson above. I had read a story about Pat Boone getting to minister spiritually to Rock Hudson before he died. I had read earlier that Hudson had been an atheist earlier in his life, but I knew that many times people do revisit their beliefs when they get a terminal illness. Therefore, I called American Family Radio’s show “Today’s Issues” when they opened up for phone calls for their guest Pat Boone and here is basically what he said about his encounter with Rock Hudson:

Roy was his real name, though the world knew him as Rock Hudson. A major, iconic movie star, he  was homosexual. But the world didn’t know that, until he was famously revealed to be dying of HIV/AIDS. He, and those close to him, knew well that if his sexual proclivities were known, he could never have been the superstar ladies’ man, the poster boy for handsome hunkdom. So he and those who profited from his stardom kept it quiet until almost the end. 

My wife, three friends, and I were with him the night before he died. In his lovely, quiet Beverly Hills home, he was terribly ravaged by the disease.

He couldn’t speak, and his emaciated body bore no resemblance to the one millions of women had dreamed of. But his eyes shone as our little group gathered by his bed to pray with, and for him. Obeying the admonition in James 5 in the New Testament, I poured a little oil on his bare chest and rubbed it in with my hand, praying for him to be healed and restored. He smiled gratefully at all of us.

His countenance had brightened, and his friend/caregiver Tom exclaimed, “Roy, tomorrow is going to be a better day! I’ll lay out your ‘happy clothes’, and maybe you’ll feel good enough to get up . . . ”

But early the next morning, as Tom opened the shutters to admit the first rays of the sun, Roy, in his “happy clothes,” slipped away to join  our friend Jesus. I believe, since he gave his last days to their Lord, we’ll be together again . . . and I so look forward to that.

Inflation had to be brought down and the liberals said Reagan’s strategy was stupid. However, it worked and the liberals had all criticized it before it was put into practice. William A. Niskanen and Stephen Moore have sent the record straight in their October 22, 1996 paper “Supply-Side Tax Cuts and the Truth about the Reagan Economic Record.” I will be sharing portions of that article with you over the next few days.

The Reagan-Volcker anti-inflation policy may seem noncontroversial today, but it is noteworthy that at the time the decisions were made, there was very little consensus about how to defeat inflation.
In 1980, for example,economist Paul Samuelson wrote that “two-digit price inflation is a distinct possibility for much of the decade of the1980s.” He predicted an inflation rate from 1982 to 1987 of 9.4 percent a year. The Democratic party was endorsing a host of inflation-fighting measures that were economically wrongheaded and almost certain to fail. During the 1980 Democratic presidential primaries, Jimmy Carter’s anti-inflation policy included credit controls and gas rationing while Ted Kennedy, his opponent, endorsed wage and price controls.
Most Keynesian economists had predicted that Reaganomics would make inflation worse, not better. Hobart Rowen of the Washington Post stated the conventional wisdom by arguing that the Kemp-Roth tax cuts would be “dangerously inflationary.”
He added, “There is nothing in the [Reagan] fiscal program–in the view of those not addicted to supply-side theory–that works against inflation.” James Tobin, a Nobel prize winner and an informal Clinton administration adviser, also had warned of the inflationary impact of Reagan’s tax cuts and had called instead for “a five-year period of gradually declining wage-increase guide-posts.”

I hate to only give you a portion of the episode “How to Cure Inflation.” Therefore, I gave you the first third this morning and now you can have the 2nd third. I promise to give the last third first thing tomorrow morning.

Part 2 “How to Cure Inflation” by Milton Friedman in his film series “Free to Choose.” This clip is 9 minutes.

1980 Reagan commercial

Little known presidential facts:

1. Robert Lincoln is the only man in U.S. history known to have witnessed the assassinations of three different presidents, his father, James Garfield, and William McKinley. After he saw anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoot McKinley, he vowed he would never again appear in public with an incumbent president.ⁱ
2. Much has been written about Lincoln-Kennedy assassinations coincidences, including:
   1. Both had seven letters in their last names.
   2. Both were shot in the head on a Friday seated beside their wives.
   3. Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln Limo, which was made by Ford.
   4. Lincoln was in Box 7 at Ford’s Theatre, and Kennedy was in Car 7 of the Dallas motorcade.
   5. Both assassins had three names with 15 letters (John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald).
   6. Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and was captured in a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy in a warehouse and was captured in a theater.
   7. Both were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in ’46 (1846/1946), were runners-up for their party’s nomination for vice president in ’56, and were elected president in ’60.
   8. Both were succeeded by southern Democrats named Johnson.^k