Remember, Remember The Eleventh Of September

The George W. Bush Presidential Library has no building yet, but in our up to the minute virtual world they’ve begun filling the Internets with thoughtful reminders of the glorious Bush Era.

The Library website has an exciting 9-11 look-back slide-show,    featuring our hero on the phone,

videoconferencing, 

and   staring urgently.

All of our old friends are there:

Tony Blair,

    Hamid Karzai,

even good old Pervez Musharraf.

And never forget: we invaded for the children!

I’d forgotten former New York Governor    George Pataki was with Bush on the rubble mound

in NYPD drag, anticipating the butch look  Bush would sport the next seven years.

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.

…And We’ll Never Hear The End Of It

French President Nicolas Sarkozy joins the line of hero’s taking credit for Communism’s demise.

From the Daily Mail via Wonkette comes news that the small but perfectly formed pol has posted a Facebook photo and copy which appears to place him amidst Freedom’s Chiselers® taking a whack at the Wall the night it fell.

Sarko is in Berlin for the anniversary festivities, so his invented heroics should make him many new friends.

Also among the Berlin throng is Ronald Reagan offspring Michael Reagan. He is there to dedicate a Reagan room at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, an event so momentous it is unmentioned on the Museum’s website.

One of Michael Reagan’s honored guests will be the German Democratic Republic’s last Prime Minister, Lothar de Maiziere. The former PM may feel a special bond with former FBI informant Ronald Reagan as de Maiziere was forced from politics by accusations he’d been a Stazi informant under the DDR.

Barack Obama is not in Berlin, and his “World Freedom Day” proclamation leaves both Reagan and Sarkozy unmentioned.  Obama does coyly use the  phrase “Kiev to Capetown” in describing the consequences of the Wall falling, cruelly recalling Reagan’s, shall we say, complex  approach to Apartheid

Feet Tragically Obscured     

Good news from the watery Philippines, where tragic flooding ends on a happy note.  Renowned shoe fetishist and drag queen ideal Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection at the Marikina Shoe Museum was plucked from the rising waters by quick thinking museum staff.

Now the Marcos family can concentrate on the career of Strongman Scion Bong-Bong Marcos.

Cost Some Jack?
President Obama has announced himself “saddened” by the death of Gabon’s 42-year dictator, Omar Bongo Ondimba. Sadness perhaps not shared by Gabon’s population, who despite enjoying recent “generally free and fair election” have other troubles: 

“The following human rights problems were reported: limited ability of citizens to change their government; use of excessive force, including torture toward prisoners and detainees; harsh prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; an inefficient judiciary susceptible to government influence; restrictions on the right to privacy; restrictions on freedom of speech, press, association, and movement; harassment of refugees; widespread government corruption; violence and societal discrimination against women, persons with HIV/AIDS, and noncitizen Africans; trafficking in persons, particularly children; and forced labor and child labor.”

Bongo knew from trafficking, importing French prostitutes when not getting “handsie” with Miss Peru.