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Desert Foxy   

There is a special moment in every president’s life when the Saudi check for his presidential library arrives. But Ronald Reagan did better than that.

New Mideast tell-all A World of Trouble is packed with important revelations, but for our purposes the story that matters is about a man and a horse.  Or several. And a briefcase full of diamonds.

Author Patrick Tyler shows Ronald Reagan scheming to keep two horses given him by our gallant Saudi allies,  plotting with then [and current Bush] White House Counsel Fred Fielding to hide them on a neighbor’s ranch.  The law required the president to donate the horses to the public.

Tyler points to a previously published excerpt from Reagan’s diaries confirming the scheme:

Nancy  got $2 million dollars of diamonds, stashed at Harry Winston.

Reagan was endlessly photographed with his horse  “El Alamein,” which Reagan received while in office from distinguished side-burn wearer  and  Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo.

  How the horse was snuck past the lawyers is not known.

How all this squared with Reagan’s legendary rules to live by is also unknown.

“Reagan kept several horses at the ranch stable. He made sure that the Secret Service horses ate from separate hay troughs, because he did not want American taxpayers paying for his own horses feed. “

Baath Waters Run Deep 

Former Iraqi Strongman Saddam Hussein’s yacht Ocean Breeze was for sale by these guys, but the current Iraqi government  spoiled the party, snatching back the ship as ill-gotten loot. The Ocean Breeze was to have gone on sale in Nice, where it showed up after spending twenty years holed up in Saudi Arabia.

Now Iraq is putting this remnant of the eighties  on sale at last!

It’s reported to be super-swanky throughout, with all the gilded table legs a kleptocracy could need.

Saddam appears to have opted for defense in depth with yachts as he did palaces.         This one did not survive the American invasion.

Ship Shape! 

In further Dictator Chic News, The Sunday Times reports great progress on the Tikrit area Saddam Presidential Library & Tomb.  

The grave itself is looking sharp, and his tribesman have added that special Presidential Library touch, the “recreation” of the great man’s office.

Priced [Not] To Move   

Gerald Ford property speculator Kevin Hayes appears to be one of the silent victims of America’s unfolding banking tragedy,  as Wall Street’s giant sucking sound diminishes the supply of marks willing to pay $15 million so they may walk the pool tiles where Gerry trod.

Hayes has been trying to unload Ford’s former Colorado ski property since June.  It’s only been shown to four qualified buyers, and he is trying increasingly desperate efforts to recapture that Ford Era magic.

With the materials at hand, Hayes paints a portrait of the great man in retirement, at work on his memoirs:

“Ford had a habit of rocking back and forth while writing, and so Hayes had the construction workers preserve a portion of the floor where the chair left grooves.”

Sadly, Ford published his autobiography in 1979, four years before the house was built.

Scratch This  

It Came From The Heartland! 

The apparently desperate boredom of the Great Plains has led a coven of University of Illinois students to slap together what we can only hope is the world’s first film featuring Father Abraham as a bloodsucker.

The Springfield premier is this weekend.

You have been warned.