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Media Fight Among Selves Over Who Killed Communism, Reagan Apparently Not Present

Your Role In Its Downfall 

Yet another instance of European condescension towards Ronald Reagan, The Man Who Wasn’t There®.

A spat amongst former East Berlin correspondents over who triggered an East German official’s incoherent statement which opened the Berlin Wall has somehow completely ignored Reagan.

Riccardo Ehrman and Peter Brinkmann both questioned Politburo member Günter Schabowski the fateful night of November 9, 1989, as he stumbled through presenting half-way measures easing travel from East to West Berlin.  Reporters pressed the poorly briefed Schabowski over the announcement’s meaning, leading the German Democratic Republic’s unwitting funeral director to say that border controls would relax “Immediately. Without delay.”

Demoralized guards and popular pressure did the rest, and the Wall was breached.

But did either of these esteemed gentlemen put it in writing?

To mark his retrospective genius the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is getting all gussied up,  celebrating the Berlin events Reagan wasn’t President for.

US News & World Report: The Blog breathlessly reports spirited new efforts in the  continuing campaign to link Reagan’s stirring 1987 call for Communism to die swiftly with actual events more than two years later. The Library is going all out: conference on past glories, Checkpoint Charlie memorabilia, and for the kids,

“…the library will display a replica where visitors can scrawl their messages of peace just as the East and West Germans did on the original.”

      No apparent mention of actual events at the time, like the heroic marchers in Leipzig who challenged East Germany’s leadership on the ground.

Reagan-Wall Tumbling claims have settled into a cliche resolutely polished for all occasions,   like the wall fragments incorporated into Reagan’s recently unveiled Capitol Hill statue.

But fact-based snubbing of the Great Communicator remains treasured tradition in some circles.  Who can forget James Mann’s cruel tallying of previous equally ineffectual Berlin occasions when Reagan waxed wistful about the Wall’s fall.

   And lest we forget, Reagan trained his steely gaze upon North Korea too, still standing at last report .

   Enduring!     

With the dedication of the Capitol’s Ronald Reagan statue, our nation’s capital now celebrates our most beloved deceased president at National Airport,

a trade center,   and the “Ronald Reagan Republican Center,” command post for

present Senate clinging to power efforts.

The nation as a whole remains under threat.  Mrs. Reagan was not just in town for shroud tugging.

“She hosted a big get-together at the Capitol Hilton that constituted the kickoff of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation’s $100 million fundraising effort to update the Reagan museum and host a variety of events in two years during the Reagan centennial.“

In order to add to their already obscene piles ‘o cash:

” The Reagan Library Foundation’s assets totaled more than two hundred million dollars in 2007 (the most recent year available). In that year alone, the Reagan Foundation’s income topped fifty-four million dollars; in comparison, the federal budget that year for all twelve presidential libraries combined was seventy-eight million dollars.“

Nancy‘s Back! 

Presumably refreshed by her late night seances with Commander In Chief and departed husband Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan made a triumphant return to Our Nation’s Capital Tuesday.

She saw Reagan immortalized in stone at the Capitol, watched President Obama sign a bill creating a Reagan Centennial Commission, and lunched with Michelle Obama.

A ‘joyful‘ Reagan knocks out California’s statue honoring Thomas Starr King, credited with keeping California from seceding during the Civil War, replacing it with a memorial to the man who wrecked everything.

The Sculptor’s Pre-Joy Work Elsewhere

Reagan’s placement in the hallowed halls is owed to Representative Ken Calvert, previously best known for consorting with prostitutes and jailed lobbyists,  so scurvy that even conservative organ Human Events runs best-of hit pieces on him.

Ken draws inspiration from the Gipper, but struggles to articulate just how:

“”Madam Speaker, there are too many accomplishments for me to name here, but it is clear that President Reagan was a Californian, an American, and a Patriot.“

As a bitter few have repeatedly complained, previous presidential centennial commissions have had broadly representative boards  This entity will be a creature of the Reagan Foundation, which will hold the majority of seats.  We can look forward to the Regan Centennialists federalising whatever crackpot schemes the Reagan Library cares to put across.

Let’s hope for more detail on Nancy’s dinners and dresses, possibly cross-referenced with  day-by-day time-lines drawn from his diaries and letters to Nancy.

Happy Days Ahead! 

Nancy Reagan speaks to Vanity Fair‘s beloved Reagan conduit Bob Colacello, and we learn she communes with the deceased former chief executive.

“I see Ronnie. At nighttime, if I wake up, I think Ronnie’s there, and I start to talk to him. It’s not important what I say. But the fact is, I do think he’s there. And I see him.“

But these apparitions are apparently but a foretaste of the glorious communion to come, when Nancy and Ronnie are somehow reunited in death.

‘Cause Billy Graham told her it was so!

“I said to him, ‘Just tell me if I’m going to be with Ronnie again. Just tell me that and I’ll be O.K.’ He said, ‘You are.’ And I said, ‘O.K.“

No word on if the aged evangelist’s thinks Nixon or the Jews will be coming along.

To A Higher, Better Place  

Cost Sent Here 

“A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”

In the spirit of government thrift and efficiency so needed in the present crisis, Mark Ambinder points to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate costing out the “Reagan Centennial Commission.”

This hoped for distinguished body would convene to mark the great man’s 100th, and is sponsored by California Tax Payer’s friend Elton Gallegly.  The Simi Valley Republican represents Reagan’s relics at the Reagan Library,  and is of course a scourge of government waste, fraud and abuse.  The Reagan salute would come in at a million dollars.

Gallegly’s proposed commission would be dominated by the Reagan Library, who after recently staging elaborate displays celebrating Nancy Reagan’s gowns,     Reagan’s letters to Nancy, and a kids exhibit    inviting tykes to re-invade Grenada would appear to have the cash to do it themselves.