Remembering history the way they wished it had been
Give Me Land, Lots Of Land 
Southern Methodist University had a gleam in its eye over George W. Bush’s Presidential Library even before Bush was president, according to lawsuit depositions. University officials and Bush hanger-on Harriet Miers in a dispute over land SMU bought for possible Bush Library use.
Former condo owners bought out by the university claim they were underpaid, with the land’s value going up with the Library announcement.
The Triumphant Return Of Reaganomics!  
Beloved Broadcaster Paul Harvey always claimed to have invented the term “Reaganomics,” and the sponsor of a proposed Reagan Centennial Commission is marking Harvey’s death with some classic Reagan-style accounting.
With 19 heroes opposing, the House of Representatives has just passed a power grab by Ronald Reagan’s heirs, allowing them to control all federal observation of Reagan’s Centenary. Representative Elton Gallegly’s bill creates a Reagan Centennial Commission controlled by the Reagan Library foundation, in contrast to the broad public boards directing all previous presidential centennial commissions .
The Congressional Budget Office says a Reagan Commission will cost a million dollars, but Gallegly claims “No federal money can be spent on the commission or its activities,” a story he got his home town paper to buy into. What voodoo economics does Gallegly perform to lose the costs?
The CBO says:
The Representative may be drawing unexplained distinctions between this Bill’s authorization and a later appropriation, or the CBO says the Commission might be free if takes in donations to cover its costs.
Gallegly may want to get this done while he can. He’s identified with the Reagan Library to the extent that it’s in the header 
for his web page, but he’s announced and rescinded his retirement before, and Barack Obama carried his district.
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Keeping His Own Counsel  
Karl Rove is finally answering some questions before a Congressional committee, but his ex boss continues to dodge testifying in a dispute over land bought for the George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University.
SMU bought out condo owners on land originally intended for the Library, and some former owners claim they would have gotten more for their property had they known the Bush Library loomed.
Once Happy HomesÂ
The University claims they bought the land just cuz, that the Library happened along later, and anyway the Bush site has moved north of the disputed property. The former owners are curious what SMU told Bush and when, but the Dallas retiree says he shouldn’t be vexed with such petty litigation.
Bush’s relationship to SMU isn’t recent or distant. They worked him for the Library throughout his administration, and the land was purchased $35 million donated by Roy Hunt. Hunt was also a major Bush campaign donor and intelligence board appointee, and acquired dubious oil leases in Iraq in the waning days of the Bush era.
Matthew Yglesias tries to make sense out of Gallop’s opinion polling on presidents by age, and comes up puzzled, especially by Kennedy’s over-performance across the ideological spectrum.
“I can’t imagine a coherent ideological viewpoint that would justify the high ratings Americans over-35 give to Kennedy… if you could take the Kennedy-Johnson years as a whole, then divide them up into one presidency that was dominated by Vietnam and another one that’s responsible for Civil Rights and the Great Society, then you’d have one shitty president and one great president. A lot of people seem to have basically decided to divide things up this way and call the shitty president “Johnson†while the good president is called “Kennedy.†That, however, doesn’t have a great deal to do with reality.“
 Meet Mohamed Nasheed, New Look President of the sun-kissed Republic of the Maldives.  He’s the Sarah Palin of the Indian Ocean, getting big play talking about selling his evil bad guy predecessor’s yacht on EBay.
Eventually we learned she hadn’t sold her predecessor’s jet on EBay at all, but for a loss elsewhere. And he’s been elected since October with no action.
Nasheed defeated a not nice person, Maumoon Gayoom, who indeed ran a repressive kleptocracy of which the boat and a presidential island retreat were symbols. But live by the symbol, die by the symbol.
Plain spoken Mr. Nasheed has gotten a lot of mileage as well from refusing the tacky gold-inflicted presidential palace Gayoom built.
 
But Nasheed has instead moved into the former Sultan’s palace, no slum.
If the Maldives ever gets around to selling the boat they may find the economic tide against them. When Iraq finally got title to a Saddam yacht which surfaced in Europe they hauled it back to Basra for lack of a buyer.
