Reagan Real Estate: The New York Times Visits Sacramento

 

Castles In Dispair   

The Times’ “Home” section usually sticks to house porn of the bold and the beautiful.  The trouble comes when they wander into check-able facts.

The paper’s housing survey of America’s junior executives, the governors, revealed the shocking truth that many of them do not care for the Victorian glam of their official residences.  I can’t speak to other cases, but almost everything in The Times’ two paragraphs on the Reagan’s Sacramento mansion debacle is wrong.

The article says

“Jerry Brown, who was criticized for not moving into state digs during his first stint as governor of California in the 1970s, turned out to be ahead of his time. When he returned to the post decades later, the mansion was gone — sold off to save money. (Mr. Brown now rents a 1,450-square-foot apartment in Sacramento.)”

As more “newsy” New York Times sections have reported in the past, the Reagans started this cavalcade shortly after taking office, refusing to live in the 19th Century splendor of California’s Governor’s Mansion and hurling California governors into decades of homelessness rootlessness.

 Ronnie and Nancy lived in a rental, paid for by caring millionaire friends.  And were criticized for it. Reagan pals also paid for a cheesy new suburban mansion with the muy, muy authentico name “Casa de los Gobernadores,” tragically incomplete when the Reagans left town.  The new house never passed into state ownership, and Brown’s renting generated him largely positive press, much of it focused on an allegedly floor-based mattress.

Brown’s successor lived in another rental gifted by thoughtful moguls, as did his successors.  When Arnold Shwarzenegger came to town the owner of the Reaganesque mansion made a failed push to sell it to the state, recalled in this intermittently working slide tour.

And now Jerry’s back, in a “loft” again granted by providential millionaires.

 

Reagan Deficit: Infectious Optimisim’s Troubled Past

 

 

Back In Black?   

Salute to hardest working man in show business David Weigel, for spotting Michael Reagan’s latest cry for help.

Hopefully having exhausted the old “New Reagan” mine, the Ronald Reagan semi-scion’s increasingly desperate attention seeking has led him to tap new veins of comic gold, riffing off the Bill Clinton/First Black President meme.

 

Writing for Tiger Beat of the rhythm-less The Conservative Teen , the Toni Morrison of strained analogies digs deep.

Boldly so, considering President Reagan’s colorful past.

Michael Reagan is known for these fanciful histories, having previously analogised Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein.

 

Rick Santorum Isn’t Coming After Your Birth Control

…But Happy To Let The States Do It!

santorumpost.tiff

 

The Washington Post explores new frontiers of letting presidential candidates make up their own history, giving Rick Santorum an opportunity to fuzz up his campaign against birth control.

Melinda  Henneberger in her fantisy feminist pose She The People spoke to the man himself after the fringe radicals of Salon pointed to his views on sex [against it, unless in the right hands].

Henneberger has Santorum identifying as Catholic, so of course he’s against birth control, before moving on to the Supreme Court’s Griswold ruling which got the states out of your bedroom.

It’s a philosophical question you see; Santorum feels the Supremes overreached.  He’s only for leaving the states alone to do as they please, what could be the harm?

Henneberger then drags in cartoon Fox liberal Alan Colmes, who apparently bungled a reference to Santorum’s fetishising his dead son, to end on a “how dare you” note to those who would attack this good man.

“ I’d feel silly pretending to believe he’s going to be even metaphorically riffling through medicine chests”

She may write, but she isn’t paying attention.

Back in the day, all thoughtful folk knew Ronald Reagan couldn’t possibly be elected with all his right wing baggage.  The road to hell begins in pretending as though the crazies won’t act on their impulses.

Lessen History

Ronald Reagan, Praise Be Upon Him  reagan-scout-salutes.JPG

Who’s the silent partner, the ghost who walks at Republican presidential debates?

You know where this is going.

Talking Points Memo looks at the numbers, and finds Ronald Reagan way out in front in GOPer presidential debate mentions, with living fossil of the Reagan Era Newt Gingrich in a breathtaking name-dropping lead.

I-Universe: Barack Obama, Stuck On Himself?

Tall Tales Trashed 

The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us


From the wilds of academe comes the shattering of yet another right wing Barack Obama trope, his frequently complained about tendency to first-person pronounce himself into every occasion.

Except he doesn’t.

So we learn in Ben Zimmer’s New York Times review of social psychologist James W. Pennebaker’s  “The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us.” In fact, “Obama has distinguished himself as the lowest I-word user of any of the modern presidents.”

Actual facts haven’t stopped past trafficers in Obama fashion faux-pas, teleprompter dependence, and furniture abuse tall tales, but although fastener complaints burgeon, we live in hope.