Good Times Not Forgotten! 
The Dallas Morning News reports that President Obama will answer the prayers of cracker hearts, and continue the tradition of presidents honoring an Arlington Cemetery Confederate War Memorial.
An historians’ petition had pointed to the unreconstructed racism and white nationalism of the bitter-enders who built the memorial, as well as the historical falsehoods it perpetuates.
Before Obama’s decision was known, the Washington Post op/ed page displayed a stirring example of thoughtfully splitting the difference.
University of Pittsburgh art historian Kirk Savage is author of “Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America.” He explained that Obama could have it all:
“To single out the ordinary soldiers of the Confederacy as beyond the moral pale does not help us come to grips with slavery’s more profound role in American history… President Obama, why not send two wreaths? One to the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery and another to the African American Civil War Memorial in the District, which commemorates the 200,000 black soldiers who fought for liberation from slavery in the Union armed forces…Send two wreaths with one common message: that the descendants of slaves and the descendants of slaveholders should recognize each other’s humanity, and do the hard work of reckoning with the racial divide that is slavery’s cruelest and most enduring legacy. “
But the Confederate apologists don’t seem interested in any fuss about slavery.
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“Jane Durden, president general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy — the group that erected and maintains the monument — said the controversy over the wreath reflects a misunderstanding that the Civil War was a defense of slavery rather than a patriotic call to arms.“I am not totally shocked, and it’s not just with Obama, but with a lot of the American public,” Durden said. “This is a very controversial subject — we realize that. But all we ask is: I respect your views on things and I expect the same in return.“
The Daughters will pocket Obama’s Memorial Day wreath and then move on to their real priority, the annual Jefferson Davis fest in June:
Cause For Alarm 
A group of academics have petitioned President Obama to end a beloved presidential tradition dating back to Liberal Idol Woodrow Wilson: sending a wreath each year to a Confederate war memorial in Arlington.
 
The legacy of the man who segregated Washington DC lives on in this sacred annual remembrance, only shifted from Jefferson Davis’s birthday to Memorial Day by the first President Bush.
And not just any cracker monument.
“The speeches at its ground-breaking and dedication defended and held up as glorious the Confederacy and the ideas behind it and stated that the monument was to these ideals as well as the dead. It was also intended as a symbol of white nationalism, portrayed in opposition to the multiracial democracy of Reconstruction, and a celebration of the re-establishment of white supremacy in the former slave states by former Confederate soldiers.“
The monument is a relic of lost cause-ism, reading in part:
“The power of numbers and the longest guns cannot destroy principle nor obliterate truth.”
Straw for Last Gaspers to grab hold of:Â the distinguished professors whose names are enrolled on the petition to the President include old pal Bill Ayers!
Bridgehead Regained? 
A ten-foot bronze Ronald Reagan statue somehow incorporating the Berlin Wall may overcome setbacks which would stop lesser metal, and be erected at America’s London embassy.
The proposed statue was rejected last year on the grounds Reagan had not been dead long enough, and/or because it was “lacking gravitas.” One account has the statue’s failings being structural:
“The original sculpture depicts Reagan leaning on a pedestal, but [statue fabricator] Walker said this design was rejected for the British statue because the pose would be seen as weak in that part of the world.“
 Alfred the Leaner 
How these obstacles can be bypassed is unclear, but Westminster reportedly will ponder the question again. This urge to create facts on the ground is endemic in the fabled Westminster Council, where the Tories came to grief in the nineties for selling off public housing as a means of driving out Labour voters. One Conservative Council Member committed suicide during the “homes for votes” investigation, and another paid 12 million Pounds as punishment.
The statue scheme is another effort to shape the battlefield, plunking Reagan in front of the US Embassy during its final days in Grovesnor Square, allowing the statue to then land at the new South London Embassy site as a package deal.
Sadly no representation of the proposed statue is available, but let’s take the leaping stallions 
at the College Station Bush Library’s Berlin Wall, and in our minds eye substitute a spry, youthful Ronald Reagan. 
Calling Card 
Bush biographer Bill Minutaglio takes to Newsweek’s never too rich and too thin pages to update us on the former president’s goings on, and he appears to have a rather open schedule.   “Bush has always been friendly,” Minutaglio comments, and the Ex is going out of his way to show it.
The local college kid who sold many Bush neighbors “Welcome Home George & Laura” signs found himself besieged by Bush phone calls, and a 14 year-old commanded 90 minutes of Bush’s time for a frank exchange of ideas.
Things are more mixed further from Preston Hollow. Bush got a big welcome when he first returned to Midland as ex-president. Even a Bush minion was amazed:
“They turned out 30,000 people here,” says his longtime Texas accountant, Bob McCleskey. “And that’s without giving out food and beer.“
But an effort by a hometown state legislator to congratulate Bush on his torture achievements was stopped by
heroic state representative Lon Burman.
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.“
