Work is the Curse of the Drinking Class

Adolph Hitler: Starving Artist or Unemployable Slacker?

After the death of his last close relative, and having been rejected from art school, Adolph was forced to support himself. Although he was determined, he possessed neither marketable skills nor a willingness to assume an "employee" role.

With no money, Adolph soon found himself homeless and hungry. He lived in alleys and attempted to make a meager income selling postcards that he'd painted. He finally realized that his paintings sucked so much that it was easier to resell blank pieces of paper.

Unable to find a job where he weilded absolute power and could control the fates of millions with his massive war machine, young Hitler began to fear that he'd die homeless, hungry and forgotten.

Oh… if only.

George W. Bush: Working Your Way From the Top

Like Adolph, George showed neither talent for business nor any kind of work ethic. He began his career later in life than Hitler, which may have given him more maturity to deal with his lack of interest in… whatever the fuck people do at jobs.

Bush had just spent five years in the military, where he had signed up for a six-year commitment. The combination of what he learned in college and his experience in the military were perfect preparation for the challenges he would face in business: collecting money while looking officially busy.

We'll get to Bush's Military career in a minute. Don't worry, there's plenty of laughs in the meantime.

Fresh out of Harvard Business School [snicker], Bush — well, it's actually a little hard to figure out what Bush did. From 1976 to 1978, all I can figure is that he drank a lot. We do know that George W. Bush was arrested for Driving While Intoxicated in 1976. He supposedly "disclosed" the DUI during the election by noting that he did "…not have a perfect record as a youth," in October 1996.

Youth? George W. Bush was 30 years old in 1976.

Bush tried to conceal this, but the information — part of that annoying "public record" — eventually became widely available. Right before it went national, candidate Bush participated in an online Q&A in which this exchange took place.

Of course, the real joke here is that Bush failed to disclose his arrest on his application to be a Presidential candidate. That's right Bush lied on his job application.

Oh, the delicious irony. Lying by omission while extolling the truth.

Arbusto is the Spanish word for criminal.

I mean bush.

Young Bush finally sobered up enought to go into the oil business. George W. created a series of limited partnerships starting in 1978. The entities were named Arbusto 78, Arbusto 79 and so on. The purpose of these partnerships was to drill for oil, but they never really did anything.

The Disney version of the GWBush story depicts him as following his father's footsteps into the oil business. That description is pretty inaccurate, because the only thing Junior ever successfully drilled was the bank account of his business associate, James Bath. Bath was an old family friend, who had been in the Texas Air National Guard with G. W. Bush.

Years later, James Bath would find himself under federal investigation for his role in concealing the financial activities of a group of wealthy Saudis. This raises the question of whether the suspicious transactions involved Bush and Arbusto. The paper trail shows only $50,000 coming from Bath; he claims to that these funds are his own.

G.W. was queried about Bath's role in Arbusto especially with regards to finances. George tells the FBI that he doesn't know James Bath.

When the FBI says, "Oh yes you do," Bush is like "oh yeah, that guy — I thought you meant that other James Bath." George claims that he didn't know about any Saudi connections and, therefore, assumed the $50,000 was Bath's own money.

When the issue came up in 2002, Bush remembered who Bath was and also remembered that he always knew about the Saudi money.

Sounds less like Dubya's father's footsteps than his grandfather's footsteps.

[Laugh.]

That would be just too weird if George W. Bush ended up laundering money for people who hate freedom like his grandfather, Prescott.

[Silence. Nervous laugh.]

Funny!

Wacky!

[Awkward silence. More awkward silence.]

Oh… god… no.

Oh yes.

Years later, in 1992, a bitter dispute erupted between James Bath and another of his business partners, Bill White. In an attempt to "take Bath down," White filed a report with the Justice Department's Financial Crimes division concerning Bath.

White alleged that Bath was acting — on behalf of the CIA — as a front man for several Saudis who wished to funnel money to Bush and other Republicans in order to to curry favorable foreign policy. Mainly, they wanted to affect US policy over… what is it always over? Yes! Oil.

In sworn statements, Bath denies any CIA involvement, but admits to acting as agent on behalf of four wealthy Saudis. Although his agency for the Saudis was not properly documented, there is no evidence it affected Bath's investments in Arbusto. All that can be proven is that Bath bought a 5% stake in Junior's company for $50,000; Bath claims these were his own personal funds.

Did you expect Bath to admit CIA involvement?

The investigation revealed a trust agreement between Bath and one of the more prominent Saudis. The agreement had been entered in 1976 — coincidentally just after George H. W. Bush had become head of the CIA. The Saudi in question? Salem bin Laden, the oldest brother of a certain Osama bin Laden, who would become a bigger part of GW's life later.

Salem bin Laden spent a lot of time in Texas. He had Bath buy Houston Gulf Airport for him. Salem was an avid aviator, and died when he crashed his Ultralight outside San Antonio in 1988.

Was this an accident, or was is a CIA plot?

It was an accident; reports say that the weather was poor and it was foolish for him to be flying an Ultralight that day. Ironically, Salem and Osama's father had died in a plane crash in 1968, almost exactly 20 years earlier.

Salem bin Laden's will transferred the ownership of the airport to a wealthy Saudi banker, Khalid bin Mahfouz. Mahfouz was a large shareholder in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which was later found to been involved in money laundering and channelling Saudi oil money to various politicians to buy influence. At the time of the inquiry, James Bath was the director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., also owned by Khalid bin Mahfouz.

Khalid bin Mahfouz was director of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia (NCB). This bank, which had been founded by his father Salem bin Mahfouz, has been accused of financing Osama bin Laden.

Bill White obviously had the kind of faith in our judicial system that every patriotic American should have, but no informed American could possibly sustain. The statements were filed in early 1992; the alleged bribe recipients, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were the President and Vice President, and one of the alleged money launderers, George W. Bush, was the Vice President's son.

The Justice department quietly dropped this case in 1993; nothing further happened… but would you have predicted differently, for fuck's sake?

Arbusto changed its name to Bush Exploration, and continued its mission of laundering money and supplying George W. with the six-figure income needed to cover his bar tabs.

At this time, future president, Bill Clinton, was also engaging in his own brand of "bush exploration." Yuk yuk.

I can't belive I'm not deleting this.

When Bush Exploration got to the point where it couldn't even pretend to be a viable business, it was sold, with George W. included, to Spectrum 7, and finally rolled into Harken Energy. Both mergers were obvious favors to the Bush family. From a business standpoint, they were analogous to paying twice the sticker price for a car that was not only used, but had already been crushed into a cube of scrap metal. But hey, George W. Bush ran a badly failing business and everyone got their money back — isn't that swell?

George W. Bush became a director of Harken Energy Corp in 1986. The company was in financial trouble, but where George W. Bush goes, gratuitous oil money follows. In 1987, Harken received a $25 million cash infusion from BCCI via a Swiss subsidiary.

Near the end of 1988, a DEA sting operation nabbed BCCI for laundering drug money. By the end of a four-year investigation, the bank would be shown to do little else than laundering drugs money and purchasing influence from powerful politicians. BCCI's London accountants, Price Waterhouse deliver a withering report called "The Sandstorm Report" detailing quite a bit of bad behavior that BCCI would have been able to cover up.

In an effort to clean up their image, BCCI hired Hill & Knowlton (H&K) to do Public Relations.

Hiring H&K is pretty much an admission of evil.

Recently, George W. Bush plead ignorance as to the source of the 1987 funds, "I didn't know it was from BCCI."

Right.

But, Dubya had bigger fish to fry, anyway. In 1989, he bought himself a baseball team, the Texas Rangers. Actually, he bought 2% of a baseball team, and was told he'd be the "public face" while another partner, Edward "Rusty" Rose III, would actually run it. Here's a name to file for later: James Doty. He was the attorney who Bush hired to represent him in the contract negotiations.

Also in 1989, Harken avoided some ugly financial numbers by selling a subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum to an unnamed buyer.

The unnamed buyer turned out to be International Marketing & Resources, which was also a Harken subsidiary. Bush, who was on the audit team when this occurred, pleads ignorance. It's possible that he didn't know — the transaction was well-hidden; for example, the irregularity was missed by Harken's auditor, Arthur Andersen.

In January 1990, Harken is mysteriously granted a choice contract for oil rights off the shores of Bahrain, an island nation off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Despite having no international experience, the tiny, failing company won out against companies such as Shell Oil. Naturally, the stock price shot up.

The stock price subsequently tanked when the company was given the one-two punch of war breaking out in the region and a third quarter report that could no longer hide the bad news.

Luckily, George W. Bush was the world's smartest businessman. He had sold a majority of his stock on June 22, 1990. Bush claims that he didn't know the financial condition of the company, although records show he was at a meeting just a week earlier where it was discussed. He also points out that he couldn't have known about the Iraq invasion of Kuwait that would occur six weeks later.

Declassified intelligence reports have revealed that the US intelligence community was aware of the impending invasion as early as August 1989. Of course, since the information was classified at at the time, how would George W. Bush, a simple oil executive have gotten access to it? Just because his father was the President and Harken had CIA ties thicker than the anchor chains on a battleship… I mean, be serious!

Why wasn't this immediately investigated by the SEC?

Well, probably because they didn't immediately know about it. Bush took 8 months to file his paperwork. He claims he got it in on time and that the SEC bureacrats "lost it." Uh-huh. Sure.

When the paperwork was filed, the SEC was on it like Delta Force. But, after some investigation, they dropped the case, although they specifically "did not exonerate George W. Bush."

Why didn't they pursue it further?

I don't know.

Maybe you should ask the man who was the SEC General Counsel at the time: James Doty.

Did you remember the name, like I said?

We Report. You Decide.

Bush stopped drinking in 1986. Below is a link to a page on The Smoking Gun web site. Watch the video (Quicktime or Windows AVI) and wonder which is scarier: that Bush is a bald-face liar, or this is what he's like when he's completely sober.

Only In America

One thing that probably didn't happen in 1986, but Bush claimed did happen, was that he stopped being a drunk. I'm willing to believe he stopped being an embarassing drunk. This would have been right at the time his Dad would have begun setting up his 1988 presidential campaign.

Someone certainly realized that if Bush senior was going to run for President, his whole life would come under scrutiny, including his immediate family. Sure he could say "My son runs an energy company that he owns," but it wouldn't take long for people to find out the this had never really run anything other than a bar tab and was just drawing a paycheck from daddy's friends in order to buy his political favor. I'm guessing about this, but why and how would George W. Bush suddenly stop drinking in 1986, without going to AA or anything?

Maybe he was tired of floating through life on booze and daddy's money. Well, if that's the case, sober George didn't show any evidence that he had any other path he could follow. His record of acheivements since becoming "sober" is the same: a feckless puppet propped up to further someone else's agenda.

He was still rewarded for doing nothing. Harken paid him an $80,000 salary for the year he spent working full-time on his father's campaign.

When the elder Bush lost re-election in 1992, the Republicans started working double-time to restore their political empire. A lot of older strategies wouldn't work because of changing times. For example, Abe Zapruder's cheesy 8mm camera had complicated things enough, and today everybody had camcorders. The FOIA made is hard to use government agency for dirty tricks campaigns. It was going to be a tough race.

The Republicans don't seem to realize that they would be re-elected (for real) more easily if they provided the majority of voters with peace and prosperity. If they did, they might actually provide it. Unless they can fix it so that only the richest 1% of American can vote, they seem to feel their best strategy is to frighten the voters into thinking the "peace and prosperity" candidate is dangerously complacent. After Bob Dole, who has a working brain and some shred of decency, failed to beat Clinton, they've obviously lost any hope that the electorate cares about competence.

With RNC strategy shifting back to having a vacant, inoffensive meat puppet provide a front man for their policy machine, it probably wasn't long before someone realized that George W. Bush was their perfect candidate. With no time to lose, our hero was maneuvered along a series of steps that looked like a credible career path to the Presidency — hence the baseball team, etc.

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