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Fun Bunch 

Michael Wiseman in The Washington Post asks an interesting question as the Bushies leave Washington: who gets their stuff?

There’s a lot of it.

“In February 2001, the Bush administration began an extraordinary portraiture deployment across all levels and locations of government. It’s time to call those troops home.”

Wiseman’s Post piece focuses on the personality cult photo homage assembled outside her office by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.  She has  accumulated 130 photos in this one area of the sizable Labor Department building.  Thirty-nine of them feature Chao solo, twenty more with President Bush and other administration greats, and fourteen Chao-less of Bush solo or with minions.

An Air About Her 

Chao has been there since the beginning, the only Cabinet Secretary to survive the entire Bush era. When she’s not giving  dental technicians incurable lung disease  Chao is half of a Washington Fun Couple with beloved Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell,  currently masquerading as the defender of the taxpayer against an Obama economic stimulus and killer of the auto loan.

Now that the Bush people are leaving, what to do with these iconic images of has-been hacks?

“The Bush-bunch icons are public property. I suggest that all of them be auctioned to souvenir hunters. The money raised might be used, in part, to restore the lights in the Roosevelt Memorial or to repair a Metro escalator or two. “

Or perhaps to repay taxpayers for their $14 million dollars spent in part on the Elaine Chao Auditorium at the University of Louisville’s Mitch McConnell Center.

Greatness Comes Early On Long Island 

The Economist features a roundup of current presidential naming activity, and not surprisingly there appears to be no last minute rush to name things for the outgoing fella.

Instead, waves of hope crash over towns and municipalities, school boards and city councils, as a net-aroused citizenry demands Barack Obama’s name be slapped onto any and all available public real estate.

Only small advances so far.

Hempstead Long Island [or in an eccentric English spelling, “Hamstead”] is proud home to Barack Obama Elementary School,    claimed as the nation’s first.

There have been setbacks.

His Name was rejected in Tacoma Washington, Marin County California,  and Valley Stream Long Island.

The record  on road naming is mixed as well. St.Louis may finalize naming a boulevard for Obama this month,  but an effort in Hollywood Florida will have to go through the Republican state legislature. Opa-locka Florida has gone ahead with slapping his name on an existing street, furthering the irritating South Florida tradition where every other street seems named for Ponce De Leon and Commissioner Andrea Rubin, along with some original 1920’s developer.

Barack busting out all over has provoked an unusually moronic backlash.

Mark Impomeni isn’t afraid to salute brave Valley Streamers for standing up to the name change artists…

“The parents who balked at the name change were wise to do so, for “tradition” or any other reason.“

…before moving on to the real fun: pissing once more on Bill Clinton.

The shocking facts

“Bill Clinton was elected to the presidency twice. Yet Wikipedia lists no naming of a school for him in its list of accolades that the former president has received since he left the White House”

No higher authority than Wikepedia’s citizen encyclopedists exists, but sadly they missed a few here, and led Mark astray.

The Ghost Who Walks  

There’s the William Jefferson Clinton Elementary School in Compton California, Sherwood Arkansas William Jefferson Clinton Elementary School [he spoke at its dedication] and the William J Clinton Elementary School of La Joya, Texas. [Google: embrace it!]

The current fellow isn’t faring so well.

  His visit to the apparent sole Bush-named school in Stockton California is elaborately documented on the White House site.

No one seems to care, and while carrying water for Israel earned Bush the notion of a “Bush Center” in Israel, the Knesset killed the idea in 2007.