1927.

{ 9:20 AM }

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Poppy's fortune cookie. Dubya's daddy, the man that Iraqi evildoer Hussein tried to kill, has been busy buying up Asia (WSJ):

HONG KONG -- Global private-equity firm Carlyle Group LP said yesterday it raised $668 million for its Carlyle Asia Growth Partners III Fund, which invests in private companies across China, India, Japan and South Korea. [...]

Carlyle Asia Growth Partners III is the third fund managed by the Carlyle Asia Growth Capital group, which has an aggregate committed capital of about $1 billion in the region.

Carlyle Asia Growth Capital also manages Carlyle Asia Venture Partners I, which was launched in 2000 and has $159 million in assets, and Carlyle Asia Venture Partners II, which was launched in 2002 and has $164 million in assets. Combined, those two funds have invested in 37 companies in Asia.

U.S.-based Carlyle Group has $39 billion under management globally.

"We look for companies with outstanding management and track records, differentiating and proven business models, as well as large potential markets," said Wayne Wen-Tsui Tsou, Carlyle Asia Growth Capital's managing director.

Suddenly the tapping tiptoes of wimpy WASP ex-presidents with billion-dollar purses can be heard skittering into dozens of Asian boardrooms, according to the June 2006 edition of Asia Business & Investing:

Former President George Herbert Walker Bush probably had no visa problems when he quietly visited China recently.

Late-night calls to contacts in Beijing not only determined why the former president was in China, but his favorite Beijing restaurant and hotel.

It turns out the former GOP president was in China doing some legwork for his pals at the enormously powerful, and very privately held Carlyle Group. It's a Washington, D.C., investment firm with huge clout and a huge international roster of advisors and managers.

Its Chairman is Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., its Chairman Emeritus is Frank C. Carlucci, Senior Counselor is James A. Baker, III (you remember him from the 2000 Bush Supreme Court presidential campaign) and its senior advisors are Richard G. Darman and Arthur Levitt.

Trust me, the Carlyle team is just as well stocked at the bottom as it is at the top.

Anyway, it looks as though Bush 41 was in China because the Carlyle Group is opening a Shanghai office. It plans to invest up to $1 billion in China over the next two years.

The most enlightening part of this article is seeing how foreign business interests regard American democracy as the laughable sham it is: "... James A. Baker, III (you remember him from the 2000 Bush Supreme Court presidential campaign)."

"Supreme Court presidential campaign" is the best four-word description of 2000 I've ever heard.

Poppy's fortune cookie says this: "You will get richer and richer, and then die." My prediction is that Poppy will die in 2010, the one year when there is no estate tax — compliments of his son — and his heap of Carlyle millions will eventually go to Jenna tax-free so she can invest it, as only she can, in vodka and Marlboro Lights.

{ 8:27 AM }

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"Touché" ???

{ 2:22 PM }

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Enron's enablers. $160 million buys a lot of high-octane evil. From the Houston Chronicle:

Plaintiffs' attorneys in the Enron shareholder lawsuit filed papers Tuesday saying Houston law firm Vinson & Elkins helped executives at the company conduct a massive accounting fraud that led to that firm's December 2001 bankruptcy and billions of dollars in investor losses.

V&E was no "mere scrivener, drafting, assembling and presumably even stapling closing documents," for Enron, "oblivious to the import and impact of what its most important and largest client was doing," the filing made in U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon's court said.

Rather, V&E and Enron were "joined at the hip," with more than 600 firm lawyers having worked on hundreds of transactions over the years, according to the filing made by Bill Lerach, lead lawyer for the investors.

From 1997 to 2001, Enron was one of V&E's largest clients, paying $160 million in legal fees, the filing said.

When the book The History of Conspiracies in Early 21st-Century America is written, it will no doubt include such fascinating facts as that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was a V&E partner not long before he covered up Dubya's 1976 drunk driving arrest. V&E is involved in all sorts of denials, including denying global warming, where V&E partner John L. Howard Jr "led the Bush-Cheney 2000 Transition’s environmental team and assisted in developing President Bush’s energy plan and environmental, natural resource, and energy policies." Need I mention their generous contributions to the usual suspects, including Bush, Cornyn and DeLay?

Lay, Skilling, Cheney and Bush — you have to give them credit for amazing amounts of consistency in their defiance against reality in the stock markets, in Iraq, and in New Orleans. And you have to credit V&E in their ability to enable the most insidious evils to gain such national and international importance.

{ 9:51 AM }

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Marine anthropology. We can only assume that this post from "BenAMarine" is from an actual Marine:

Only Domestic Help Wear Uniforms

As you may know, President George W. Bush has three brothers and a sister. Together, the five Bush children have produced 10 combat-capable enlistment age adults who would be suitable for military service in this, a time of war declared by their father or uncle.

These children are the president’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara; Jeb’s sons George P. and John Ellis Bush Jr., and daughter, Noelle; Neil Bush’s daughter Lauren and son, Pierce: Marvin Bush’s son* Marshall; and Dorothy Bush Koch’s son Samuel, and daughter Ellie.

So far none of them have chosen to take up arms in the great battle for freedom that is Iraq.

And neither did the great swath of chickenhawks among their elders in the administration.

Somebody please tell BenAMarine about Operation Yellow Elephant.

*ADDENDUM: Apparently Marvin Bush also has another son called Walker, and he and his daddy are up to some serious badness together.

{ 11:00 AM }

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Seeing red. In the few weeks since Karl Rove said, "Bush's economic policies, particularly his tax cuts, helped cure what ailed us," the market in its infinite and allegedly impartial wisdom has proven otherwise.

"There's been nowhere to hide," says Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James. "This is one of the more deadly declines [in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, down 6% since May 10] I've seen in a while." [Ian McDonald, WSJ]

Aw, Jeffrey, don't be a gloomy Gus! Look at the bright side! Bush's economic policies are working, Rove said so! Didn't you hear his speech? And here's the proof — tax preparers, private prison operators, and funeral homes are all in the black...

"Other lower-growth, but stable businesses that have stayed out of the red over the past month are tax preparer H&R Block Inc. -- up 6% over the past month -- private prison operator Corrections Corp. of America -- up 6.7% -- and funeral-home operator Service Corp. International, whose stock is up nearly 1%."

All hail the Republican growth economy: death, taxes, and incarceration.

{ 3:40 PM }

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