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Kings of Comedy

From the video wizards of Guba comes an oddity in the Reagan canon: his appearance in a TV “roast” staged as part of the desperately unfunny Dean Martin Show.

All the greats are there – Don Rickles, Philis Diller, Dom DeLuise, and Jack Benny as the Ghost of Comedy Past. The jokes are lame, even allowing for the era , but Reagan laughs like he’s present at the birth of comedy.

Don’t Try This At Home

The Boston Herald visits the storied Reagan Ranch, and learns that Ronald Reagan was Just Like Us, if by us you mean a god ‘n guns guy. Because after all, ‘The last U.S. president to hunt was Ronald Reagan…”

Maybe so, but try and find a picture of Reagan with a gun which isn’t a movie still.

The Reagan Ranch is now run as a conservative tourist/fundraising stop by the Young Americas Foundation, and they had beloved Boston talk radio personality Michael Graham up for a look.

He was not disappointed.

“…while roaming the Reagan Ranch just outside Santa Barbara, I saw with my own eyes the vast gulf between and the politician some believe is the Reagan of 2008, Barack Obama…It was on display in the two (count ‘em, TWO!) leather-covered Bibles in the Reagan bedroom and the well-stocked gun case nearby.”

What he saw and how they got there is unknowable given the YAF’s dubious history of artifact shuffling.

Let’s explore the land of the ever-fruitful “Reagan Jeep.”

The Spring 2006 issue of YAF’s Libertas has a blue jeep at the ranch,

but by August a visiting right wing blogger saw a red jeep, which appears to have some provenance.

The YAFers seem confused. Their publication mentions Ronald Reagan’s jeep called “Gipper.” on display at their Santa Barbara “Reagan Ranch Center.”

[note “scrambler”]

Perhaps their confusion comes from a license plate they have .

I have no idea what they have, and they may not either.
Yet another “Reagan jeep” was offered for sale at a Houston car auction in early May 2008.

Signal Intelligence

Your War President wants you to know: he cares about sending wrong signals.

Getting his story straight is another thing.

President Bush let it be known in an interview with The Politico that he too feels families pain over Iraq [but not enough to attend soldier’s funerals], and he’s given up golf for the duration.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

But apparently not biking,

fishing,

segwaying,

or near religious

attendence

at baseball’s opening day.

When did the light go on?

“Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights…”I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

But as AFP reports, he kept playing for two more months.

He’d been under the spotlight before things went south in Iraq, most famously while denouncing suicide bombers in 2002.

” “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.”

His business out of the way, Bush barely paused for breath before saying, “Thank you. Now watch this drive.”

”

“We will take your concept, idol or mentor and create a mammoth statue out of it.”

The Dream

…And The Ditch

The vision is taking hold at the Venice of Houston.
Historic Real Estate Inc. – so steeped in, um, something, is building the weirdest incarnation yet of one man’s obsession with gigundus presidential heads.

David Adickes‘s gift to the nation is his obsession with immense busts of our revered former leaders. He already has theme parks centered on these First Oddities in South Dakota and Virginia, but it will be so much nicer with tour boats. And shopping. Somehow the mystery of Easter Island paired with the likes of Marvin Van Buren will draw swarms of Cinnabon munchers.

Adickes’s anything to draw a crowd spirit has already led to the heads use as backdrop to a

rap video. Think water ballet!

Loot & Lore of the Sea

Legal, but not the touching catch and release tale we’ve been told?

Questions are being raised about the Senior President Bush’s Tarpon adventure off Florida. Byron Stout’s Tarpongate probing makes clear that, tagged legal catch or not, the fish in question may have suffered fatal injuries in the course of the fish/Bush photo-op.

“The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission made it clear, in guidelines distributed last spring, that there is no legal rationale for boating an untagged tarpon because there are no size restrictions that compel its measurement. The commission’s position is that large fish have skeletal structures not designed to support them out of water, and pulling such fish into a boat or onto land violates the legal requirement of releasing them “unharmed.” Studies of the effects of catch-and-release fishing have shown that fish hauled out of water can suffer lethal injuries, including suffocation, damage to internal organs and structures, and removal of slime that protects them from bacterial infections.”

Enjoy your trophy, Mr. President!