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Homes Of Distinction  

You can’t blame the realtor for trying, but why does the Washington Post think we care if the house of someone who was a White House aide almost 50 years ago is for sale? True LBJ obsessives may recall Harry McPherson,  Lyndon Johnson’s speechwriter who famously did not write the  “I Shall Not Seek” speech, but Jesus.

Wiley old Clark Clifford at least had the moxie to actually host Truman and Johnson before going out with a bang, avoiding indictment over fronting for the CIA and worse money launderers BCCI because prosecuters felt sorry for the old man.

Obama Now One Of The Greats! 

For decades, criminal geniuses have disguised themselves in the act, and an early 90s film from the Patrick Swayze ouvrier sparked a seemingly endless wave of robbers wearing masks of the great. 

Now the current president has joined this proud line, with North Carolina gas station robber donning an Obama mask to do the deed.

Despite the crime wave, this is one of the least troubling parts of the Swayze legacy.  The the late actor was recently offered as an excuse for the multiple has-been-ed Jennifer Grey to appear on the last round up, “Dancing With The Stars.”

McNaughton’s Group  

Special thanks to the eagle eyes at Wonkette, who’ve spotted a big one.

Extraordinarily cheezeball artist Jon McNaughton has brought forth a gathering of greats, as the ghosts of presidents past hover around sullen, stand-offish looking Barack Obama, variously annoyed or aghast at his literal TRAMPLING ON THE CONSTITUTION!

McNaughton is the kind of crank who rambles along in incoherent Founderspeak for numbered paragraphs, passive aggressively concluding:

“The information is historical. If it is not familiar to you – Google it.“

Cramming all these figures into the frame seems to have skewed McNaughton’s perspective.  Small but perfectly formed James Madison is so upset at Obama’s boot-heel to our liberties that he’s bent over pleading, but appears to be almost Obama’s height.   The Forgotten Man is a giant seated on a toy town bench. Such is the occasion that Franklin Roosevelt walks.

McNaughton’s painting doesn’t leave much to chance, featuring ominous clouds, flags at half staff, and an accompanying video lush with  piano chords of doom.

Architects of Victory      

Presidential grade inflation reaches a tragic apotheosis with the unveiling of an exciting new Frank Gehry design for DC’s long awaited Eisenhower Memorial.

The scheme accomplishes so many goals:

– obliteration from sight of DC’s only recognition of Lyndon Johnson.

– dimming if not completely blocking Education Department views of the Capitol, giving Department employees the experience of life behind a billboard.

– further destruction of L’Enfant’s Washington street grid.

– bringing to DC more of the Stalinist bombast we’ve all so enjoyed at the World War Two Memorial.

The thing is huge. Tiny people will cavort amidst giant topless pillars to nowhere strewn about the plaza, with vast metal mesh screens blocking the Department of Education’s Lyndon Johnson Building from sight.  These jumbo-trons in steel will portray scenes from Ike’s career, “amplifying the setting and creating an ideal background for the memorial experience.”

Or, as greatergreaterwashington said, ” It’s like we’ve taken the tarps that are supposed to hide the parking garages at Nationals Ballpark and turned them into a monument.”

But not to worry.  “we’re very concerned about that issue,” Gehry said of the tapestry’s impact on the LBJ building.”

Beneath the masses of metal a collection of stones will be arrayed in a semi-circle. This half-assed Stonehenge may host the memorable quotes we all associate with the Hero of Anacostia Flats.

The Memorial Commission presents as almost a done deal its land grab of Maryland Avenue, with the street and the triangle northwest of it already absorbed into Ike’s lebensraum.

We can look forward to further retrospective attempts to position Eisenhower as a quiet force for Civil Rights, stepping briskly past Ike’s view that “All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”

Also perhaps best avoided is his only gotten son, Richard Nixon.

To Equatorial Guinea, where the Dark Continent meets the Deep Blue Sea, and oil floats the ruling family to a higher realm.

A spectacularly corrupt kleptocracy has evolved this West African island and some coast into a tropical gangster parody.

Think Of It As A Name Tag  

President-Till-The-Cows-Come-Home Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has presided for three decades since killing his uncle, the previous dictator, and now the New York Times reports that a swanky bit of Malibu may be forever E.G.

Strongman scion and heir apparent Teodoro Nguema Obiang spends much of his time in a multimillion dollar mansion in this suburb of the stars, despite US laws that nominally bar corrupt foreigners from our shores. 

Equatorial Guinea has been in an expansive mood lately.   The regime recently sprang a mercenary jailed in a murky coup attempt, freeing an unhappy Simon Mann to pursue his claim that Son Of The Iron Lady Mark Thatcher helped the plot.

President Obiang, shown here gathering strength from the martyred Che Guevara,    has friends throughout the world. 

The regime’s website practices a level of delicious shamelessness, posting headlines like  “DEMOCRACY AT ITS PEAK IN EQUATORIAL GUINEA” and leaving them up despite mockery.

  A vast presidential mansion is being built, and even better,  a presidential library! 

Where did this big idea come from?

Equatorial Guinea has had a storied relationship with one American who has promiscuously spread himself over our nation’s Presidential Library universe.

World Beater

Joe L. Allbritton is a cartoonish exaggeration of Washington incestuousness, serving on boards for the Kennedy Center, the Lyndon Johnson, Reagan and George H.W. Bush Presidential Libraries, and a failed effort to bring George W. Bush’s to Baylor University.

Alblbritton financed his service to former greats’ memories through his ownership of Washington’s Riggs Bank, a daisy chain of power ensnaring Russian spies,  Saudi princes, a Bush uncle, General Pinochet and the Obiang family.

For hiding Obiang and Pinochet millions Allbritton lost the bank.  Riggs paid $39 million in US civil and criminal penalties, $8 million in Spain.  Allbritton and his son personally paid one million dollars to Pinochet torture victims.