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Greatness Comes Early On Long Island 

The Economist features a roundup of current presidential naming activity, and not surprisingly there appears to be no last minute rush to name things for the outgoing fella.

Instead, waves of hope crash over towns and municipalities, school boards and city councils, as a net-aroused citizenry demands Barack Obama’s name be slapped onto any and all available public real estate.

Only small advances so far.

Hempstead Long Island [or in an eccentric English spelling, “Hamstead”] is proud home to Barack Obama Elementary School,    claimed as the nation’s first.

There have been setbacks.

His Name was rejected in Tacoma Washington, Marin County California,  and Valley Stream Long Island.

The record  on road naming is mixed as well. St.Louis may finalize naming a boulevard for Obama this month,  but an effort in Hollywood Florida will have to go through the Republican state legislature. Opa-locka Florida has gone ahead with slapping his name on an existing street, furthering the irritating South Florida tradition where every other street seems named for Ponce De Leon and Commissioner Andrea Rubin, along with some original 1920’s developer.

Barack busting out all over has provoked an unusually moronic backlash.

Mark Impomeni isn’t afraid to salute brave Valley Streamers for standing up to the name change artists…

“The parents who balked at the name change were wise to do so, for “tradition” or any other reason.“

…before moving on to the real fun: pissing once more on Bill Clinton.

The shocking facts

“Bill Clinton was elected to the presidency twice. Yet Wikipedia lists no naming of a school for him in its list of accolades that the former president has received since he left the White House”

No higher authority than Wikepedia’s citizen encyclopedists exists, but sadly they missed a few here, and led Mark astray.

The Ghost Who Walks  

There’s the William Jefferson Clinton Elementary School in Compton California, Sherwood Arkansas William Jefferson Clinton Elementary School [he spoke at its dedication] and the William J Clinton Elementary School of La Joya, Texas. [Google: embrace it!]

The current fellow isn’t faring so well.

  His visit to the apparent sole Bush-named school in Stockton California is elaborately documented on the White House site.

No one seems to care, and while carrying water for Israel earned Bush the notion of a “Bush Center” in Israel, the Knesset killed the idea in 2007.

Lincoln As She Never Saw Him  

As the nation enjoys Barack Obama’s ham-handed efforts to resurrect Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Lincolnesque “Cabinet Of Rivals,” actual Lincoln historians try to spoil the party with facts.

Dickinson College Civil War historian Matthew Pinsker challenges the renowned plagiarist,  pointing out that Lincoln angered his supporters by taking in his opponents, who largely failed him.

“Lincoln’s Cabinet was no team. His rivals proved to be uneven as subordinates. Some were capable despite their personal disloyalty, yet others were simply disastrous…Lincoln was a political genius, but his model for Cabinet-building should stand more as a cautionary tale than as a leadership manual.”

EverReady! 

Jesse Taylor of Pandagon joyously mocks the endlessly expressed notion that putting a little touch of Reagan in everything we do is key.

Taylor takes off on Scott Rasmussen’s Wall Street Journal advice to seek Him everywhere, and hilarity ensues:

“Barack Obama’s election reaffirms the central tenet of American political life, which is that Ronald Reagan is what people want, even before Ronald Reagan was around to let us know how much we wanted him….Ronald Reagan does not get to absorb every good thing that every presidential candidate ever does throughout perpetuity, nor is his corruption-riddled, hypocritical, propaganda-driven legacy the only benchmark for a successful period of governance.  What we’re being expected to believe is that a black Democrat running openly on large levels of government investment in our economy, higher tax rates on high earners, a humble and diplomacy-focused foreign policy, alternative energy and expanded, government-driven access to healthcare – and repeated attacked as a socialist for doing so – is the exact same as a white Republican conservative who agreed with Grover Norquist’s remark that we must drown government in the bathtub.

A desire to see Ronald Reagan win every time does not mean that, in fact, Ronald Reagan actually won every time.”

He Lives! 

Donald Hank is feeling the spirit, and it’s Saint Ronnie!

How can we account for the miraculous defeat of the Wall Street bailout? Reagan walks among us!

“Ronald Reagan is back, and he is you

Friends, conservatives often complain that no one has ever risen to take the place of Ronald Reagan in our government.

But Ronald Reagan is back, and he is you! His spirit has never once left us.

His spirit was alive and well when you stood up last year and opposed the bipartisan amnesty bill that you knew the Gipper wouldn’t approve.

He was here again today in our Congress during the vote that failed to pass a bill that would have made slaves of every one of us and ended free market capitalism forever in the USA.”