http://slate.msn.com/id/2084356

$9,634,088-$26,593,000

I’d call him rich.

I wonder whether the Business School taught that notorious course in “Strategic Misrepresentation” when GHWB was there…

During the 2000 election, this girl friend of mine said to me about GW Bush, “I just know he is going to get elected and we are going to be perceived as weak, and someone is going to attack us, and he is going to start some stupid war and get the whole world pissed off at us.”

That is the god’s honest truth. She said that before the election. In the Bible days, the people (the same type people you represent here on this web log) would have put that girl in a hollow log and sawn her in half.

I was playing golf one day with one of the guys that put that deal together and who is someone greatly admired by the president. Somewhere on the front nine, he got a call. I heard him saying, “No, tell George I’m not going to be able to make it up there.” Later, when we were having drinks, I asked him if that was the White House on the phone. He said that it was, that George wanted him to come up there for something, but that he had no interest in going to the White House. He then started talking about the Texas Rangers deal. He said, “I told George to just sit in the owner’s box, look pretty, take pictures, and sign autographs, but *not* to get involved in the running of the team, because he would just screw it up. And now,” he said with a hollow, mirthless laugh, “he is running the country.”

And no, neither he nor his father were rich. His father has some money now due to a couple of deals he was included in after he left office. And the Carlyle Group, although who knows what shape they are in at the moment. But GW Bush doesn’t have any money. One thing for sure though, there are going to be some defense contractors who are going to tighten him up when he leaves office. But, contrary to the publicity, the Bushes didn’t have any money. Still don’t really.

The part I really like is how well it worked, deficit spending, for the government that is.

Clinton was smart and took Republican ideas and made them his own. Bush was dumb and took on Democratic new deal deal spending habits. How dumb was that.

Would you still not call him rich?

Just for the record, George Bush was not and is not rich. He did not own a baseball team. You have happened to hit on one of the very few things I actually know something about.

“As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022702217_pf.html

Hillary Clinton (and Obama):

“We’ve Got Two Wars. We’ve Got To End One, We’ve Got To Win The Other.”

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTBhYzNiNDVhZTYxZmNlZDIzMjhmYjQ5MDUwZWFlYzI=

Rhbee, I mean this in the best possible way – you are a special kind of conspiracy nut. Look, George Bush is not getting rich by invading Iraq. He is rich. He was rich. Dude, the guy owned a baseball team. Being president is NEVER the best job for a Republican (think about that), I swear, Bush pretty much “agreed’ to go be President. As in, it wasn’t going to be too hard and someone had to do it. He told his other rich friends to get out their checkbook and he went and did the job.

AND HIS JOB, let me give you a REAL conspiracy here to grasp – his job WAS TO MASSIVELY deficit spend.

Re-read that. I don’t mean you like it. I don’t mean it makes him a good or bad guy, I’m saying that since 1980, Republicans have had one single exclusive strategy against the concept you imagine as “democracy.”

Their strategy is called DEFICITS. Please stick with me here so I can explain the reality you face.

Democracy is the wrongful notion that you can win votes and power for yourself, but promising to take a rich guy’s money and give it to a poor guy.

Deficits ensure politicians are ONLY able to PROMISE to give people things. You cannot actually deliver. Deficits kill the “free stuff” benefits of democracy.

Want proof? Bill Clinton is the first Democrat President to fail to deliver a single new economic benefit to the poor. He actually took one away- he ended welfare and started workfare.

I GUARANTEE YOU if Obama or Hillary wins they will immediately announce they can’t afford to deliver any new benefits. Otherwise, the bond market will exact its pound of flesh and they will lose re-election.

Now that’s a real conspiracy for you to fret over. Glad to help.

—

As to Afghanistan, that’s where the UN is getting ready to send more troops to do our bidding to catch Al Qaeda and kill off Talibani (sp?) . Thank Prince Harry.

If they came streaming into Iraq, then wherefrom and of why?

No, Bush became our problem on 9/11. Before that he was just a cheater who had bamboozled his way to the top. Al Qaeda saved him from immediate failure by giving him the excuse to use our fears and take us into Iraq and begin building his own monarchy. Somewhere there are the ghosts of Russian KGB agents laughing at how the CIA got hoist on its own petard and now the US is on its way to a crushing economic disaster of its own.

Leave Afganistan, I know it seems so heartless after what Charlie Wilson’s War did for them. Gee, I wonder if any of the Afganis got profit points? But we need to stop making war and learn how to make peace. We need to actually learn how to go through the United Nations not around it. Besides, if we’re out of Iraq, the focus goes back to catching those responsible for the attack on 9/11. Not where it is now, in making war on any country that could be responsible. Those responsible were not a country. And they never claimed to be. The neocon/Bush/Cheney group apparently were never smart enough to see the distinction.