Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader regrets that he hasn’t had more time to blog over the past few days. But C’est la vie.

Sadly two great figures of the Reagan years have passed in the past two days. Word of Cap Weinberger’s passing is just making the news wires. And yesterday news of Lyn Nofziger’s passing made the news.

Both of these men played significant roles for Ronald Reagan. Although very different roles.

Your Maximum Leader has one Lyn Nofziger story to share. Waaaaaay back when, your Maximum Leader was an intern on Capitol Hill. He worked for a wonderful woman “M.D.” M.D. was from Oregon but had come to Washington DC as an aide to Lyn Nofziger when Reagan was elected in 1980. When Nofziger left the White House, M.D. moved into another political job. It was in this capacity that your Maximum Leader knew her. M.D. remained very close to Lyn through all his trials and tribulations after leaving the White House.

So… The story… On the day of the funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini (June, 1989) your Maximum Leader and others wee standing in M.D.’s office. She had a tv on and it was tuned to CNN. (Back then tvs on Capitol Hill got three channels only C-Span, C-Span 2, and CNN.) We were all watching the live feed of the teeming masses of Iranians jumping up and down, hitting themselves, and generally wailing for the dead Khomeini. We were watching with mouths agape - as at that point one hadn’t become desensitized to mass demonstrations in the Muslim world. In the middle of watching the footage the phone rang. It was Lyn Nofziger calling to speak with M.D.. She picked up the line and listened. She started laughing. She asked Lyn if she could put him on the speaker and repeat what he just said. So, your Maximum Leader was watching the tv. He was watching images of young Iranians chanting something in Persian and beating their heads with rocks. Then came Nofziger’s voice over the speaker. “Are you guys watching CNN?” We responded that we were. Then Nofziger said, “You know what those guys are chanting?” We responded that we didn’t. Nofziger said, “They’re saying, ‘I should’a had a V-8.”

Heh. It was very funny at the time…

Anyho… Read some of the obits for Nofziger. They are here, here and here.

There are many more obits for Cap Weinberger (deservedly so for his much higher profile position). Read some here and here.

Carry on.