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.

Ronnie Really

Madison Wisconsin’s Capital Times has taken a Reagan Legacy Project’s press release, “localized” it,   and loosed it upon an unsuspecting public.

The shocking headline?

Doyle doesn’t sign ‘Reagan Day’ proclamation

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle declined to roll over for the Reagan Legacy Project’s effort to snowball opponents of their glossy memory of Reagan’s presidency.   The Cap Times does source to the Project, but we never hear Doyle’s version,  and the paper swallows whole the Project’s hysterical tone:

“Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle was one of only a handful of governors to deny recognition of the late president “

… when even the Project counts quite a handful, 20 Governors [2/5ths of 50!], as either declining to feel good about Reagan, or being too uninterested* to respond to the Project’s query.

*Including Bobby “New Reagan” Jindal!

What We’re Made Of   

Ronald Reagan’s birthday is Friday, and it would appear America’s love affair with the leathery matinee idol can only be sated by fawning tome after fawning tome   on the cooing conservative.

    But the only Reagan book you really need this year is Will Bunch’s Tear Down This Myth.   The Philadelphia blogger has become a national treasure simply by resurrecting Reagan Library Executive Director Duke Blackwood’s explanation that the restless spirits of the age led to the Reagan Library having no Iran-Contra material on display:

“We’ve had it in. We’ve done many of the renovations and it was addressed. It’s out now and, at some point in time, we hope to bring it back. But again, that’s the fluidity of a museum. You can’t have the same thing, you know, for ten, fifteen, twenty years. You need to refresh.“

 

Make Way For Tomorrow: Duke & Friends Fill Space