flowers: $500,000

The merger of Hollywood and the White House becomes official today, when the wonderfully homely Chelsea Clinton gets hitched in Rhinebeck, New York, in an obscene extravaganza that will cost a guesstimated $3 million. Flowers: $250,000 (some say $500,000). Vegan snacks: $250,000. Portable toilets: $15,000. The bride's jewelry: $250,000. Fireworks: classified.

What a distance we have traveled since Harry Truman carried his own suitcase to Union Station after the Eisenhower inaugural in 1953. He didn't even have a pension! (Congress passed the first presidential pension act in 1958, in part because of Truman's precarious financial situation.)

Now our presidents leave office as rich as Oprah, as Stephen Spielberg, as Barbra Streisand--as rich as all the Tinseltown celebrities who will attend that wedding today. Few have played this game as well as the father of the bride. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

a rare public embarrassment

Much to my surprise, the House of Representatives has actually brought charges against the lovable but corrupt Charles Rangell, the Adam Clayton Powell of today. The Gray Lady is surprised as well: in today's paper, David Kocieniewski terms the event "a rare public trial of the Democratic Congressman this fall, a potential embarrassment for the Democratic leadership during the election season." How funny! Congress does something right for a change, and that's an embarrassment? I'm impressed that the House has that much sense of shame. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France...

Of course France was never occupied by the Nazis; it was occupied by the German army, aka the Heer. That's one of the absurdities of Inglourious Basterds--it uses "Nazi" as a euphemism for "German." Most German soldiers weren't Nazis, though the officers all had sworn allegiance to Hitler personally, beyond their military oath.

With that off my chest, I'm embarrassed to admit how much I enjoyed this movie, especially Brad Pitt as the hillbilly in command of a band of homicidal Jewish commandos, and Christoph Waltz as the SS colonel-detective on the other side. Each deserves a best-actor Oscar, though both can't get it, and neither will. The movie is just too politically incorrect. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Dos vedanya, Tony!

This delightful photo of BP's former chief executive appears in the UK Guardian under the equally delightful headline: 'BP sends Tony Hayward to Siberia to appease US'. What better place for him than Russia, after the experience he's had this spring and summer, navigating the shoals of American politics? There too corporations find themselves at the disposal of the head of state. Perhaps Vladimir Putin will assign the slinky Anna Chapman as Mr. Hayward's personal assistant--he has promised the expelled secret agents "good jobs and a bright future" now that they are home again. There would appear to be room for her in Mr. Hayward's back seat. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Bye, bye, Mr. English pie!

The lead-footed Tony Hayward has been thrown over the side of the BP recovery vessel, to be replaced by the American Robert Dudley. Unlike the U.S. Congress, where bad judgment is rewarded by increased influence (see the career curve of Barney Frank), private corporations do have the ability to jettison those who preside over disasters, whether they deserve to be thrown overboard or not. But coming as it does after a year and a half of governmental meddling in business affairs (see the career curve of Rick Wagoner, former CEO of Governmental Motors), I can't help wondering if the Obama White House had something to do with BP's decision.

There's a word for this sort of thing. Right-wing bloggers call it "socialism," but that isn't quite right. Rather, it's state capitalism, as practiced in the 1930s by Germany, Japan, and Italy, and as more recently revived in China, Russia, and Venezuela. The government doesn't actually take over an industry, as the Labour government did in Britain in 1945; instead it leaves the corporations in place--or create new corporations, in the case of China. But they are hollow. The government hires and fires the managers, and it confiscates the profits, whether by taxation or simple extortion. BP likes to pretend that its initials stand for Beyond Petroleum. Mr. Dudley knows better: the new company is Beyond Profitability. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Pain is pain, he says

The nation's chief tax writer will face a Congressional inquiry for, among other things, not paying his taxes in full. Isn't that a hoot? Perhaps the Secretary of the Treasury will appear as a character witness. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Lindbergh

.

My father sailed to America in May 1927, and for the rest of his life he told how the Spirit of St. Louis flew low over the steamship one day while the captain sounded the latitude and longitude on the ship's whistle. True or not, the story is one that I savor as proof of the moment's significance. Merely to have been on the North Atlantic that afternoon, sharing it with Charles Lindbergh, was an honor worth telling for half a century.

The review is in the Wall Street Journal this morning. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

a modest proposal

The College Board is in a panic because U.S. college graduation rates have fallen behind those of eleven other developed countries. We must "improve education from preschool through higher education," says Gaston Caperton. By this he presumably means throwing more money at it, the solution that has worked so brilliantly for the public schools.

Well, we can't possibly dumb down our universities any more than we already have--I live in a university town, and I claim some expertise. So here's what we should do: let's give a Bachelor of Arts to every high school graduate, perhaps even a Bachelor of Science to the girls so as to solve the gender imbalance in the physical sciences. Then the universities could award the Doctor of Philosophy (or medicine, or law) at the end of four years of what is fancifully called higher education, and which in any event now commonly requires five years. This will have the additional advantage of doubling or trebling the number of physicians, who will be needed to care for the 32 million (!) becoming eligible for health care at taxpayer expense. Plus, all our grade-school teachers with be PhDs, which will go far to improve the quality of the whole process. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

the president, the poll, and the NYT

You wouldn't know it if your only news source were the leading newspaper in the United States, but the Quinnipiac University poll yesterday showed that President Obama has hit a new low in popularity, with only four out of ten respondents believing he deserves a second term. That's surprising enough, but what really makes me wonder is why I must turn to the blogosphere for that information. I did a Google search yesterday for quinnipiac poll obama and the only newspaper that turned up was the Kansas City Star. This morning, I see that the New York Daily News and some London papers have chimed in. Perhaps it's only that the New York Times comes to work later? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

jumping for joy

Congratulations to George McGovern, onetime contender for president (he carried Massachusetts and the District of Columbia). Like another war hero, George Bush the elder, he celebrated a recent birthday by stepping out of an airplane at high altitude. Mr. Bush came down on a parachute; Mr. McGovern on a paraglider. Both men were combat pilots in WWII, Mr. Bush in a Navy dive bomber, Mr. McGovern as commander of a lumbering B-24 Liberator bomber. Two of his grandchildren were on hand for the dive. Mr. McGovern is 88, and he hopes to live to be 100. Considering the alternative, so do I. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Malaise redux

There seems to be a show called "Morning Joe" on a network called MSNBC, though I have no personal experience with either. It seems however that Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, used a term from the 1970s to describe the nation’s current state:

"I think we’re now going through a phase in which there is a sense of pervasive malaise, which affects different groups in society in different ways. So people are dissatisfied; they’re slightly worried; they don’t see a good certain future for themselves or for the country.... And I have a sense that Obama, who started so well, and who really captivated people—he captivated me!—has not been able yet to generate some sort of organizing idea for an age which combines a malaise that’s pervasive and percolating, and complexity...."

If your memory goes not back to the 1970s, suffice it to say that the "malaise" of the Carter administration was replaced by "Morning in America"--and that wasn't a TV show, though it had a former actor presiding.

In the jollility afterward, Mr. Brzezinski can be heard saying: "There goes any further invitation to the White House!" Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

BP and the Lockerbie bomber

The Wall Street Journal weighs in this morning on the prisoner swap that involved freeing the man who brought down an airliner over Scotland, in exchange for letting BP go forward on drilling for oil off the Libyan coast. To my knowledge, WSJ was the first to stir this particular pot, but now the U.S. Senate has chimed in, demanding--guess what?--a moratorium on the project. It used to be that appointing a commission was Washington's all-purpose solution to every problem. Now the president and Congressfolk appoint a commission and call for a moratorium. I'm not sure what these moratoria are supposed to accomplish, other than driving up the cost of oil, and perhaps driving BP out of business.

Libya could resolve this problem by ensuring that the convicted man, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was released on the word of a Scottish doctor that he was about to die, does indeed expire on schedule. In short, put a moratorium on Mr. al-Megrahi. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Unintended consequences

There was a humorous story in the New York Times yesterday about the travails of being an anti-warrior in the Age of Obama: "Answering the G.I. Rights Hotline for the last 11 years, J. E. McNeil has counseled thousands of soldiers who want to become conscientious objectors and get out of the service." But with Congress's May 27 step toward repealing the don't-ask/don't tell policy, Ms. McNeil has a problem: the crisis of conscience has suddenly afflicted not just those who wish to avoid close combat, but also those wanting to avoid close association with homosexuals. What's a Good Person to do? “I told him it was outside the norm, and I’d have to think about whether it met the legal criteria,” she said. “I won’t tell you my internal dialogue. But I will tell you I have a brother who died of AIDS and a sister who’s a lesbian.”

You get no prize for figuring out how Ms. McNeil came down on this particular question of conscience. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

on being Beyond Petroleum

Congratulations to the boffins and roughnecks at BP, who two days ago pulled off a feat comparable to those space epics in which brave Americans ride a rocket to head off an asteroid or some such threat to civilization. Did you watch the robot gently nudge the valve handle shut? That there was nobody inside the tiny submarine, and that it was happening two miles below the surface of the water, was all but impossible to grasp. Mr. Obama will no doubt take credit (he is edging in that direction: "We won't be done until we actually know that we killed the well"), but if BP pulls this off, it's entirely due to the fact that there are still competent oil workers at the company that famously launched a campaign to brand itself as Beyond Petroleum. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

War (concluded)

I've finished Sebastian Junger's War and I have to say: this is the book we've been waiting for. It's the best account of Afghan combat, the best portrait of the modern American infantryman, and the best book about warfare in many, many years.

At the foot of this blog is a quote from a poet whose name I never did catch, and which I came across by accident during one of my first research projects for my MA "programme" in War in the Modern World at King's College London: "What truth soldiers would speak / None would hear, and none repeat."

Well, the soldiers of Battle Company spoke the truth, and Mr. Junger repeated it. This is a wonderful book. Buy it. Read it. Pass it on. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On supporting Arizona II

A polling outfit called TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence (weirdly abbreviated TIPP) finds that 51 percent of Americans support Arizona's law requiring police officers to check the immigration status of those stopped for other reasons. Only 35 percent approve of the U.S. Justice Department's attempt to invalidate the law. But here's the fun part:

“What is interesting here is that Americans are on the side of Arizona and seem to not share the US government’s views against the law, despite wide media coverage of the clash between [President] Obama and [Governor] Brewer on this issue,” says Raghavan Mayur, president of TIPP.

Despite? Couldn't it be that Americans are supporting Arizona because of the wide media coverage? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

War (the book)

I'm a third of the way through, and I'm hugely impressed. Sebastian Junger became an instant best-seller with The Perfect Storm. Now he's done it again with War. Apart from the rather odd dust-cover photographs, it's a masterful and convincing account of men in combat--in this case, at a fire base in "a small but extraordinarily violent slit in the foothills of the Hindu Kush" mountains of Afghanistan.

It's curious but true that the best accounts of the Afghan war have been written by journalists, not soldiers, though there have been plenty of combat memoirs. (Mostly by officers. Perhaps that's the problem? Mr. Junger concentrates on the grunts, not their commanders.) My previous favorite was The Only Thing Worth Dying For. Mr. Junger's may be the better book, because he was present for much of the action he describes; he didn't write it from interviews after the fact, as Mr. Blehm did with his great account of the Special Forces team that went into the 'Stan in November 2001, when the war was green and everything possible. Check it out at Amazon. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Platonic fudgery

The Economist has a brilliant bit of writing on that farcical United Nations resolution "condemning" the sinking of that South Korean warship:

The Security Council's statement is strongly worded, in a strange way, though ultimately toothless. True to form for the UN, it is designed to pacify everyone, but will end up truly satisfying no one. In an almost Platonically ideal example of fudgery, the wording of the statement condemns the incident (which it does at least identify as an "attack"), but places the blame on nobody in particular. 

Concise, funny, and true. Don't you wish you could write like that? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Nancy Pelosi, call your hairdresser!

Here's Ms January on a Czech political calendar, featuring Katerina Klasnova, the vice speaker(or perhaps I should edit that to deputy speaker) of the Czech Republic's Chamber of Deputies. There are so many handsome women in the country's parliament that they are known as the Blonde Coalition, and the Public Affairs Party (to which they belong) has put out a cheesecake calendar to celebrate them. One of the ladies turned up in a suit and wound up being photographed wearing just the jacket. See the story and slideshow on the Wall Street Journal online. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Oh, never mind! II

Who says the wheels of justice grind slow? (Or fine, for that matter!) Those ten deep-cover Russian spies have already been "whisked off" to a prison  tougher than any they'd face in the United States. The operative verb is from the New York Times story, whose summary says it all:

Suspects in a Russian spy ring pleaded guilty, facilitating a prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States and ending an episode that had threatened relations.

Because, after all, who needs a trial any longer? The president does it all, at less expense, less delay, and less damage to everything except the notion that justice is not supposed to be a one-man operation.

If I seem disgruntled--well, it's been a very hot week, and I was so looking forward to more revelations about the slinky Ms. Chapman. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Here's an idea: let Phoenix sue Washington!

Not content with firing company officers (General Motors), shaking down foreign companies (BP), and generally bullying any industry (Wellpoint) or small nation (Honduras) that offends it, the Obama administration has now filed suit against the state of Arizona for its impudence for requiring police officers to enforce the law of the land.

It seems to me that Arizona has a much better case for suing the federal government and its minions. What part of nonfeasance doesn't the U.S. Justice Department understand? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Oh, never mind!

The slinky Ms Chapman faces a bleak future. Probably at the instigation of the White House, ever anxious to press the Reset Button, there seems to be a big rush to get those Russian "illegals" out of the country. According to the New York Times this morning, this would allow "the government to avoid a series of protracted trials." Yeah, right. Protracted trials are what the U.S. justice system does best!

As far as we know, the Gulag is a thing of the past. But I for one would not like to be on an Aeroflot plane to Moscow, working up an explanation of why I had spent hundreds of thousands of rubles over many years, with only a series of Facebook photos to show for it. I'd much rather have a protracted trial--the more protracted, the better. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

morning swim

We know it as McIntosh Island, for the family that have owned it for about a century, and it lies a bit south of east of our dock. I've always wanted to swim out to the island and back, and this morning the tide was high at eight o'clock, the bay was as placid as a mirror, and the water had warmed up a bit from the chill of June. So I did it. The distance is 1,158 meters, which sounds longer than two-thirds of a mile. Anyhow, it's impossible to swim a straight line (especially on the return trip, when I couldn't make out our dock against the shoreline) so I would add ten percent for that. Call it three-quarters of a mile. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

get your Afghan ribbon here!

When I was in basic training at Fort Dix, there was a store in Bordentown nearby that sold any sort of U.S. Army decoration that might take a young man's fancy. Sharpshooter medals were in especial demand among the 'cruits. I'm glad to see that the internet has simplified this sort of credential-shopping. Want to tell the world that you served in Afghanistan? The medal is yours for ten bucks at Advanced Warfighting Solutions. If your wallet and your head are fatter, you can also buy a flak vest (without the bullet-resistant inserts, alas), a machine gun mount for your Humvee, and a two-thousand-dollar rope for abseiling down from your helicopter to a Gaza-bound blockade runner. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford