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

Desert Foxy   

There is a special moment in every president’s life when the Saudi check for his presidential library arrives. But Ronald Reagan did better than that.

New Mideast tell-all A World of Trouble is packed with important revelations, but for our purposes the story that matters is about a man and a horse.  Or several. And a briefcase full of diamonds.

Author Patrick Tyler shows Ronald Reagan scheming to keep two horses given him by our gallant Saudi allies,  plotting with then [and current Bush] White House Counsel Fred Fielding to hide them on a neighbor’s ranch.  The law required the president to donate the horses to the public.

Tyler points to a previously published excerpt from Reagan’s diaries confirming the scheme:

Nancy  got $2 million dollars of diamonds, stashed at Harry Winston.

Reagan was endlessly photographed with his horse  “El Alamein,” which Reagan received while in office from distinguished side-burn wearer  and  Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo.

  How the horse was snuck past the lawyers is not known.

How all this squared with Reagan’s legendary rules to live by is also unknown.

“Reagan kept several horses at the ranch stable. He made sure that the Secret Service horses ate from separate hay troughs, because he did not want American taxpayers paying for his own horses feed. “

Don’t Mess With America’s Widow !

The beatification of Nancy Reagan took a further step Friday,  when Barack Obama learned that inept jokes referencing her obsession with astrology were forbidden.

Obama was responding to a pointless spray of Presidential cliches [“Have you spoken to any living ex-presidents, what books you might be reading?   Everyone wants to know, what kind of dog are you going to buy for your girls? Have you decided on a private or public school for your daughters?”]

Rather than saying something about the sagacity of  his illustrious forebearers, Obama made a crack about Nancy’s stargazing before launching into a detailed discussion of the family’s puppy considerations:

“In terms of speaking to former presidents, I’ve spoken to all of them that are living. Obviously, President Clinton — I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances.“

Newsmax Nancy boys lept to the attack, rolling out Nancy’s claim she only turned to the stars after Reagan’s shooting, a story blown up twenty years ago. 

The nominally more respectable Politico reached for the eveready example of Hillary Clinton, proving once more that any Republican behavior may be explained by the cool kids doing it at some future point.

Late in the day Obama caved and called Nancy.

 Take Nancy Reagan, Please!   

“The Divine Gift of Motherhood” desperately tries to process the Palin Clothes Express into the simple country girl narrative, and somehow comes up with the haunting parallel of…..Nancy Reagan!

Elizabeth Kathryn Gerold-Miller’s calls Palin a misunderstood  Everygal in need of a beauty boost:

“Most of us need a little help to look absolutely fabulous. You can almost see yourself being put into her position, becoming a surprise vice-presidential nominee, with a newborn baby and nothing appropriate to wear. You know your looks are going to be scrutinized from head to toe and all around. Considering that the entire budget spent on her behalf actually could have been spent on one outfit, by some of the rich elite, I think she was her frugal self.”

Indeed.

Further point-missing erupts when Gerold-Miller takes comfort from history, in this case the sunny version of herself Nancy Reagan presented last year in a White House fashion retrospective at the Reagan Library.

“What comes to mind most easily is a similar controversy over the pricey, high fashion clothing worn by the elegant Nancy Reagan. Most of the clothes were borrowed, and some were donated by the designers. Many of the pieces were in turn donated by Nancy, as is the intent of Palin.”

Nancy Reagan took dresses as gifts, didn’t report them, promised to reform when she got caught, and kept doing the same thing throughout Reagan’s administration.

Androids! 

….And choose to present herself as a great philanthropist by retroactively donating some of her ill-gotten gains.

The show closes next week, although Betsey seems to think it opens then.