Based on flimsy evidence and leaps of logic, conservative media outlets are pretending that, in the words of Newsmax, “Reagan’s Childhood Home to Become Parking Lot for Obama’s Library.”
Reader Interactions
103Comments
Comments are closed.
by DougJ| 103 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Based on flimsy evidence and leaps of logic, conservative media outlets are pretending that, in the words of Newsmax, “Reagan’s Childhood Home to Become Parking Lot for Obama’s Library.”
Comments are closed.
burnspbesq
Pave Paradise!
Eric U.
I would pay good money to make this happen
DougJ, Friend of Hamas
@burnspbesq:
Seemed perfect for this story.
scav
@Eric U.: The market speaks! They should be so reassured by the highest and best use finally kicking in.
raven
Oh, it always seems to go
Schlemizel
Thats so unfair. Reagans childhood home should be a giant latrine. Its much more emblematic of how St. Ronald treated the country and what the result of his leadership has become
dmsilev
From this morning’s Trib:
Schadenfreude all around! (and yes, the building is being turned into rubble as we speak.)
japa21
In other words, the standard criteria for any RW claims.
Bokonon
Why don’t the Democrats take a page from corporate America, and start launching hostile takeovers of Presidential libraries of GOP Presidents? I mean … how can they object? Money talks, baby! Commerce! Free enterprise!!
I would pay good money to tear down the Richard Nixon library and turn the site into a dump or a sewage treatment plant.
Ben Franklin
They wish this was true, as well…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bejdhs3jGyw
Soonergrunt
So the booger-eating, tantrum-thowing, little-accident-having age* was Reagan’s glory days?
*The first time around, I mean. The last couple years of his presidency and the decade that followed are a different issue, of course.
Yutsano
Every place that Ronaldus Magnus ever resided or even slept in is a sacred place that must be preserved for all time. How DARE Obummer soil this holy legacy! SACRILEGE!!
(Isn’t he putting his library in Hawai’i anyway?)
@Mnemosyne: It renders the whole building, nay, the whole BLOCK, sacred ground.
@Roger Moore: Agreed. I say we start with the airport in DC.
Roger Moore
I think we ought to fight against the Reagan Legacy Project by trying to rename every valuable thing named after Reagan for a Democratic president. And does anyone else see the irony of naming thousands of government buildings after somebody whose achievement was supposed to be shrinking government?
Mnemosyne
How in the heck do you even make a single apartment within a large building a historical landmark?
scav
@dmsilev:
Memory in tact? That doesn’t work either way I attempt to correct it. In treacly insincerity or in fits of inadvertant inattention get a bit more of the flavor.
dmsilev
@Yutsano:
To Be Determined. I know for a fact that the UofC is just one of the Chicago-area organizations that would like to host the (currently hypothetical) Obama library. As would various universities and so forth in Hawaii. And that the last time I got a gossip update (which was before the election), the official line from Obama’s camp was that they weren’t even thinking about it until well after the election.
I can’t imagine any actual decision will be made until at least a couple of years from now, and certainly nothing at the level of “where will visitors park?”.
burnspbesq
@Bokonon:
Ironically enough, you can’t have either of those land uses in Yorba Linda, because of the freedom-destroying zoning laws enacted by the radical-sockulist Orange County Board of Supervisors.
hitchhiker
I love so much that this is what they cry about.
Reagan was out of office by the time my 25 year old daughter was born. She and everybody within 7 years either side see this kind of story as YET MORE evidence that Republicans all live in the past and only care about old white guys.
Please, please keep going, Rs. Faster and harder and with more emotion and always in public. You’re the trees in your very own tree museum.
MattF
Yeah, and also, FOX News also wants to know what about Dan Marino’s love child? Where is he (or possibly she) going to park? And what about Obama touching things in the Oval Office that Ronald Reagan touched? How can you let that happen?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Yutsano:
Technically it should be in Kenya.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
im in ur howse killin ur d00dz
/Obama
Also, wasn’t Reagan a FDR-worshipping New Deal Democrat when he was growing up? Seems kind of appropriate, then.
Mike E
Payback for GOPers always trying to dig up FDR’s bones so they can say they finally defeated that class traitor. Tho, it would help if Dems wouldn’t keep handing them a shovel.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne:
Well, it isn’t (wasn’t, really) a very big building. I walked past it many times (I used to live in that part of the neighborhood) and it probably had a dozen units at most. Three story brick building with several entrances (each one corresponding to a stairwell), three units per stair.
I suppose that you could tear down most of it, and leave the one Sacred Apartment supported in midair by steel girders or the sheer force of Ronaldus Magnus’ will or whatever.
The nameless billionaire had better act fast though. I’d be willing to bet that the wrecking ball part of the job will be done by the end of the week.
NonyNony
Why wasn’t this already a
museumpilgrimage destinationtemple dedicated to St. Ronaldus Maximus in the first place if it was so damn important to these clowns?I’m somewhat surprised that there isn’t a yearly re-enactment of the Birth of St. Ronaldus on that spot every year. And there should be a replica of the Berlin Wall nearby where they can re-enact how mighty-thewed St. Ronaldus pulled the wall down brick by brick single-handedly as well.
I smell tourist dollars people – why isn’t there already a grifter in on this one?
Trollhattan
Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow
taxiCaterpillar D8Took away mah FREEDUMBs!
I’d like to meet up with SPT and mix Nooners a giant pitcher of martinis. “There, there, Pegs, it’s going to be oooookay.”
Soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne: These are Newsmax and Washington Times readers. Logic isn’t their strong point.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Too late. The Republican Party has already done a bang up job of erasing the real human being named Ronald Reagan and replacing him with a ventriloquist’s dummy that says whatever contemporary Republican leaders believe. Why should erasing his boyhood be any worse?
Tractarian
I had no idea Reagan moved around so much as a kid. (12 different homes according to the Tribune piece.)
Bokonon
@burnspbesq:
Then I propose we take still another page from the GOP’s playbook, and create some astroturf organizations opposed to zoning restrictions (as an affront to property rights and liberty). Have them stir up lots of controversy and get lots of media face time. Then you run a well-funded slate of anti-zoning candidates for the Board of Supervisors with the support of those astroturf groups. Once you get some of them elected, wage a loud and aggressive campaign change the zoning laws. In the long term, if you win, you can then allow dumps, sewage treatment plants, pig farms, and anything else that the private landowners want to do with their sacred property ownership.
Play the long game and scorch some earth, using their tactics. :-)
Mnemosyne
@Tractarian:
Yep. His dad was kind of a bum (and a drunk) who kept going bankrupt, so they moved around a lot. I had to go to the Reagan Library for work a few months ago. It was … educational.
Amir Khalid
One doesn’t hear about British former PMs, for instance, having libraries built for the papers they accumulated while in office. That’s what countries have a national archive for; and as far as I know, the US has a national archive too. Whose was the first US presidential library?
NonyNony
@Bokonon:
What a waste.
I’d construct a giant, 40′ tall statue of Nixon facing eastwards with both arms extended, flipping double birds to the country.
I mean metaphorically that’s what he did while in office. So why not commemorate it properly?
Roger Moore
@Bokonon:
Fuck no! I think it’s very important that we preserve Nixon’s legacy. If we buy up the Nixon Library, we should just repurpose it into the Watergate Library where it’s all Watergate, all the time. Maybe we could throw in a bit about Nixon committing treason by undermining peace negotiations with North Vietnam, just for variety.
Trollhattan
@Tractarian:
Just wait until they start making shrines at every college Sarah(tm) attended. I can see the tours now.
“And this is the dormroom where the future governor banged the second string shooting guards.”
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: There are 13, apparently this started in 1955. Before that, papers were considered property of the former President and distributed to the heirs and such.
Trollhattan
Here’s hoping the GWBush “library” consists of a copy of “My Pet Goat” nestled in a pile of Texas brush.
maurinsky
Because once the apartment is gone, all memories of Reagan will disappear forever.
Oh, if only.
Also, considering he had Alzheimer’s, I can’t help but giggle about the Reagan memory being in tact (sic).
NonyNony
@Amir Khalid:
Well, if Wikipedia is to believed…
So FDR. And apparently:
Which is probably why other countries wouldn’t come up with the stupid idea of having a Presidential Library in the first place, since the expectation would be that work-related documents would be part of the government record, rather than personal documents of the individual leader.
dmsilev
@Tractarian: It was a stimulus effort by his parents to increase the number of potential Reagan Shrines around the state.
LanceThruster
In downtown Los Angeles is the Ronald Reagan SOB (State Office Building). Every city should be make a similar tribute by designating a Ronald Reagan SOB of their own.
Soonergrunt
@Amir Khalid:
Herbert Hoover(another small-government, trickle-down economy Republican failure, by the way) Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to have a presidential library.The National Archives has an Office of Presidential Libraries, that coordinates with the libraries on various things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_library
The libraries are built with private donations. Once completed, the private organization turns over the library to the National Archives and Records Administration to operate and maintain.
Roger Moore
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
All your childhood residence are belong to us. They are on the way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make your time. Ha ha ha ha….
Regular Reader
So how long until CNN and MSNBC run specials on this parking lot “controversy,” and bring in “experts” from “both sides of the debate”?
Yutsano
@Regular Reader: Depends. Has Malkin written a cheer routine for it yet?
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
IIRC, it’s a weird compromise between the library being built with private funds but run by the National Archives. The Nixon Library wasn’t an “official” library for a long time because they refused to let the National Archives in to poke around Nixon’s stuff, but they finally relented and turned management over to them.
Just some more of that good old-fashioned American libertarianism where we’re convinced the private sector can do everything better, including preserving items of national historical interest.
ricky
I wonder if any wetbacks are being employed in the demolition of this landmark, from whence Ronnie looked out and dreamed of cutting Borax commericals and cuddling chimps with superior acting skills.
joes527
@dmsilev: Even if the premise were true, that is one seriously creepy fetish/religion that that lady has.
ranchandsyrup
If they don’t stop this, Obumbo is gonna pave Simi Valley and put a gigantic FEMA camp there.
Suffern ACE
@Amir Khalid: The papers from the time in office go to the archive. But our presidents had lives before and after the office (most of the time). I don’t know if all the presidents get a library, but most have some house or other set aside. I can’t imagine Franklin Pierce’s being of much interest to anyone but school teachers looking for a place to take a field trip with their students.
Ben Franklin
@LanceThruster:
designating a Ronald Reagan SOB of their own.
SOB is SOP for the GOP
scav
If only Small Government could swoop in at the very absolute last minute and save the Hyde Park Reagan Memorial Childhood Bathtub from the very final swing of destruction.
ericblair
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, it’s right across the street from an enormous statue of a typewriter eraser. You may ponder that at your leisure.
And your standard-issue plutocrat billionaire will only invest in things that he can turn a buck on, not what garden variety schlub wingnuts want him to. There’s a significant difference there that the schlub wingnuts don’t seem to be aware of.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
You know the Islamofascist Kenyan Usurper is driving that big yellow
taxiCaterpillar D8, which the wingnuts hope gets wrecked.@Yutsano: Did you read that comment prior to posting? It can be interpreted in a couple of ways…
Roger Moore
@ranchandsyrup:
What a tragedy that would be. How would Southern California survive without Simi Valley?
ranchandsyrup
@Roger Moore: Where would the LA county court system send highly publicized and racially charged jury trials that can’t be tried in LA proper?
Bokonon
@Roger Moore:
How about a giant statue of Nixon shaking hands with Mao in friendship, while throwing South Vietnam under the bus? The statue could be called “Quid Pro Quo.”
trnc
Especially funny considering that the wingnuts would like another of Reagan’s former homes to be turned into a parking lot, at least while Obama occupies it.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
I am disappoint. Where are the James Buchanan and Warren Harding Presidential Libraries?
Roger Moore
@ranchandsyrup:
Maybe they could use the Michael D. Antonovich Antelope Valley Courthouse in Lancaster. Seems like the best place to acquit police officers among the LA County courts.
pokeyblow
So I google-mapped 832 E. 57th Street in Hyde Park and was horrified to see that, twenty years ago, I lived on the same block (56th Street side).
I feel sticky now.
ricky
If the Obama Library parking lot is not limited to alternative (or better yet, renewable) fueled multiple occupancy vehicles, I for one, will be further very disappointed.
Perhaps, in honor of Reagan, in between the pervious paver covering they can plant a single (since one is enough once seen, and two would pollute) Redwood in honor of the Great Lifeguard of Liberty.
dmsilev
@joes527: I’ll walk by the site tomorrow; I fully expect to see that she’s chained herself across the entrance or something.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
I vote for renaming anything currently named for Reagan, like Reagan National, instead the Islamofacist Soshulist Kenyan Usurper and His Sidekick Bubba National Airport.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Make all the fun you want. I was cured of liberalism by touching the tomb of St. Reagan. I have started an email campaign among all of my right-thinking Real American friends to have his holy relics distributed to selected sites nationwide so that others can be cured.
Schlemizel
@Bokonon:
I like the way you think – do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
The Moar You Know
I have one thousand dollars ready to go to make this happen.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@dmsilev: I love the fact that Kendall thinks she knows Reagan’s feelings better than his son.
ranchandsyrup
@Roger Moore: Ahh memories…..
Chris
@Bokonon:
I approve of this simply for the wingnut head explosions that would result, and recommend that we pile on my listing various things recording Nixon’s Keynesian economic record.
Of course, this would simply prompt conservatives to go viral with a “this proves Nixon was a liberal! So Watergate was the liberals’ fault! QED!” campaign.
pokeyblow
Two blocks over, this happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment
Much more deserving of a monument than some dump in which Reagan was still experiencing his first go-round in diapers.
Keith G
I see the President likes reading the blog of that damn villager Ezra Kline. Oh the humanity.
RaflW
Meanwhile, in other GOP idiocy, VA’s smart as a whip A.G. is appealing a ruling that opposite-sex anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional.
Really? It’s going to be a win for Cuccinelli to go before 15 judges en banc and argue that other-than-vaginal sex for straights in VA should be illegal. After SOTUS ruled on Lawrence v. Texas (the gay sodomy is OK, but not for Antonin Scalia case….)?
Is there a big public hew-and-cry to make a bit of husband and wife oral a crime in Virginia? Really, Ken Cuccinelli?
Another Halocene Human
While we’re discussing historic sites, what about the MLK sites in Hotlanta? I have a big post in the dead thread about that, what do y’all think?
Shorter: visit in 2014. Streetcar will be running, making access for a tourist EZ. And Amtrak improvements should also be online.
ricky
So little is sacred anymore.
http://blog.aarp.org/2013/03/21/andy-griffiths-widow-to-raze-his-home/?cmp=BAC-OUTBRAIN-BLOG_13548184_Andy-Griffith%3Fs-Widow-to-Raze-His-Home
We also may be in danger of losing Joan Rivers.
Another Halocene Human
@Soonergrunt: Zing!
Heck, I figured “little accidents” meant the WH years, because when a baby does it in a diaper, that’s on purpose!
The Moar You Know
Outlawing blowjobs. That’s a platform that in a just world would net you 0% of the vote.
Chyron HR
You mean someone from “the government” who’s “here to help”? Why, that sounds positively terrifying. What kind of monster was little “Dutch”, anyway?
GregB
You lib-zombies are making two big mistakes.
First, a presidential library is built by an ex-president. We all know that in 2016 Dictator Obama will enact emergency rule and run America for ever.
Second, he wouldn’t build a library, he’d build an abortion clinic, a mosque, a FEMA camp or a heterosexual reassignment center but not a library.
catclub
@Another Halocene Human: Now ya tells me! I am visiting this May.
catclub
@GregB: he’d build an abortion clinic, mosque, FEMA camp and heterosexual reassignment center, all in one. And a library, where Michelle will be a mean librarian.
JWL
And what color is asphalt? Need I say more? I didn’t think so.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
I think we should rename as much Reagan stuff after History’s Greatest Monster.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
Maybe we could have a statue of him signing the executive order that created the EPA.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@GregB:
Reminds me of an old joke:
Q: How can you tell that a zombie used to be a theoretical physicist before they died?
A: They’re hungry for branes.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
I think you’re missing the big picture. If he can successfully defend an opposite sex anti-sodomy law, then he can claim that it’s discrimination for same sex sodomy to be legal. That’s the real and fairly obvious goal.
Ash Can
Outrage! The liberal Nazis at the U of C are tearing down Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home of 3 and a half months and they’re undoubtedly going to replace it with something horrible! Like some building where people go to learn evil godless science! Or critical thinking! Chicago is a horrible hell of gay communist sharia!
gelfling545
@Schlemizel: I was just thinking that. A cess pit for the backhouse yould really be appropriate.
Fort Geek
@Mnemosyne: Make it a Reagan Chapel Express. Scatter those around anywhere the Holiest of Holies ever went. That way, the True Believers can just drop in for a Dip ‘n’ Bless and complimentary (reconstituted) “jelly beans.”
Gotta include childhood homes of all the women he conquered (hahahaha!), as well, since His Holy Touch extends to all.
Let All Chant His Praises:
Pie Ronnie Domine, dona eis requiem (WHACK!)
Ash Can
Also too, if Ronald Reagan were really a great president, none of this Reagan Legacy Project propaganda bullshit would be necessary.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
Can she be a naughty librarian, pretty please? I promise to be good!
Another Halocene Human
@catclub: Me too! But only as a stopover on the way to New Orleans. I am also planning on coming up for Dragon*Con. Hopefully I will like the city better than the last time I was in ATL for Dragon*Con. It looks like a lot of good and exciting stuff is happening. Too bad about the combined transportation center ballot measure, though. Sometimes this stuff has to fail a couple of times before it succeeds. Also, the usual Cro-Magnons are trying to privatize MARTA and bust the union. How dare the bus drivers make a living when Veolia, Keolis, or MV Transpo middle managers have car, house, and boat payments to make! Also, f*ck the riders, they’ll travel with creepy min. wage washouts who don’t know the routes they’re driving and paid a bribe to pass the CDL exam, and they’ll like it! Serves them right for taking the bus!
Hey, but while MARTA is still functioning, check out this awesome safety video.
burnspbesq
@Bokonon:
Won’t work. In the OC, substantially all of the political clout that’s for sale was purchased long ago by big real estate developers like The Irvine Company, who rely on zoning laws written to their taste to insulate their Stepford-like gated communities and oh-so-tastefully-upscale retail developments from icky land uses like industry and (especially) affordable housing. However, there is a highly efficient bus system to bring mostly non-white service employees to their low-wage jobs in the morning and get them the hell out of town when their shifts are over.
Fort Geek
@Roger Moore: In the words of Nooners, Acolyte to St. Ronaldus: “Let us savor.”
Eric U.
according to the strib, nobody knew where this apartment was until Reagan suggested they track it down by looking at his father’s arrest records.
burnspbesq
@ranchandsyrup:
Some would argue that paving Simi Valley would be the signal achievement of Obama’s presidency, far outweighing the Affordable Care Act or the end of don’t ask, don’t tell.
Presumably, the main gate of the Simi Valley FEMA Camp will be located on Galt Street (yes, there is an actual Galt Street in Simi Valley).
ricky
@Eric U.: Shows Ronnie knew more about his Daddy’s habits than his dreams.
burnspbesq
@Chris:
There are ten regional offices of the EPA. They should all be in buildings named for Nixon. And the one in Denver should be moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, right across the street from Dick Cheney’s house, so he has to look at it all day.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
Can we have a giant sign over the entrance that says “Work Makes You Free”?
jayjaybear
@Amir Khalid: You joke, but Wheatland (the Buchanan mansion) is still standing here in Lancaster, PA, run by the county historical society.
jayjaybear
@Roger Moore: That needs a little more oomph…maybe have it in Latin? No…German! That would be terrific!
Another Halocene Human
@jayjaybear: Oh, FFS.
Gravenstone
Dead thread, but fuck it. If you want to properly piss off the wingnuts, exhume Corpus Ronaldus, then re-inter him in the foundation of the Obama Library once it actually is built.
dance around in your bones
Totally dead thread, just like Reagan….but I doubt HE would even remember he lived in that apartment.
Unless it was in a movie he made back in the day.