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Vanity Plot?               

Anxious to display something, anything which had touched the great man for the Lincoln Bicentennial, in 2007 the Kentucky Historical Society spent $19,000 on a pair of earrings which may, or may not, have belonged to Lincoln’s wife.

The earrings history is sketchy. Basically, it’s a letter from a guy who once owned them, saying he was sure they are the real deal, he just wasn’t sure how.

The scandel has allowed Illinois, Kentucky’s sworn enemy in the Lincoln-sphere, to sneer.

“‘That’s not much of a provenance,” said Thomas Schwartz, director of research at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois…It’s not enough that a collector has a hunch, especially if he can’t even provide the person that he purchased it from.“

We do know that Mary Todd Lincoln was a proven earring wearer.

The earrings may now join Kentucky’s other famously fake Lincoln artifact: the replica birthplace cabin which now graces Kentucky’s entry in the US Mint’s parade of state quarters.

Cabin Fever!   

The Shadow Knows  

As a curious world awaits Sarah Palin’s looming Oprah encounter, tiny shards  of her upcoming polemic are emerging.

For all her roguishness, the Governor follows a predicable political path, lying about Ronald Reagan.

The Associated Press prepared a catalog of her detachments from reality, and her Reagan claims are true to the spirit of the man, in that she confidently proffers demonstrably falsehoods with a smile.

“Palin: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and ”showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all.”

THE FACTS: The estate tax,which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president.

Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.“

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.

Terrible Two 

From Florida, where infectious optimism rises from the fever swamps, comes word of a disturbance in the force.

What happens when two New Reagans® lock in deadly embrace?

Identifying New Reagans® is a perilous course, disappointment a constant danger. The Sunshine State already boasted one New Reagan® in Governor “Orange” Charlie Crist, but now a younger, cuter, New Reagan® threatens his rise to greatness.

Pretty boy former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio is a New Reagan® too! And happily, it’s a life sentence, possibly beyond.

“Rubio, like Reagan, will do wonders for the nation for years to come“

Others aren’t so sure. Florida Senate President Ken Pruitt has worked with both men, and his Crist man-crush is strong.

“He is Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan all wrapped up in one. I really love this man. His can-do, it’s-always-morning-in-America attitude is an inspiration to every citizen in our great state … Speaker Rubio, I love him, too. He’s a little tougher to love.“

Code Of Silence  

An Obama nominee’s shocking mockery of Ronald Reagan may torpedo his nomination.  Dennis Hayes is up for deputy secretary of Interior, but soldier of the Reagan Revolution John McCain claims to take great offense at some five year old musings   somehow tying Reagan to cowboy mythology.

Hayes wrote of the legendary man of the west,

“a rugged, gun-toting individualist who fiercely guards every man’s right to drill, mine, log, or do whatever he damn well pleases on the land…Like Ronald Reagan before him, President Bush has embraced the Western stereotype to the point of adopting some of its affectations—the boots, brush-clearing, and get-the-government-off-our-backs bravado.”

That’s it, end of mockery.

McCain pronounced himself unhappy, as well he should, being a product of the DC suburbs parachuted into the wilds of Arizona with only native guile and his wife’s money to support him.

For christ’s sake, Hayes is a chemical and utility lobbyist.