Josh Marshall has a Must Read / Iraq as Bush's Failed Business Venture

[KoKo]

(Here's a snip but it's worth going over and reading the whole thing...it's excellent)

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Setting aside the vast costs in human life, national treasure and regional stability, I see President Bush's adventure as a failed business venture, a start-up that went bad -- an analogy that, come to think of it, he could probably relate to.

A failed company can lose money for a very long time before it makes money and becomes a success. It only really fails when the investors decide that the problems aren't transient but terminal. They decide to stop throwing good money after bad. And then that's it.

-snip-

Think of the president as a failed or deadbeat entrepreneur (again, not such a stretch) who's already lost his investors a ton of money. He goes back to them and says, 'Okay, fine. You think I'm a moron and a screw-up who lost you guys a ton of money. Fine. But do you really want to finally, totally, conclusively kiss that $300 billion goodbye. You wanna just totally call it quits? Admit it's a total loss? What about giving me just another $10 billion and maybe somehow I'll actually pull this off? Or, since that's just not gonna happen, a mere $10 billion to put off for six months having to write the whole thing off as a loss, having to come to grips once and for all with the fact that all the money's gone and the whole thing's a bust?'

That's really what this is about. And I think we all know it pretty much across the political spectrum. In this way, paradoxically, the very magnitude of the president's failure has become his tacit ally. It's just such a big thing to come to grips with. And reinvesting in the president's folly, even after any hope of recouping the money is gone, carries the critical fringe benefit of sustaining our own collective and increasingly threadbare denial.

more at....
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010512.php

[Rick Myers]

1. EVERYTHING Dubya touches turns to sh*t!!!

Arbusto, Harkin, Rangers (traded Sammy Sosa), Texas and now, 'Murika!!!

[Erika]

2. W got Texan tax-payers to build his stadium on profit hopes

This guy doesn't know the difference between a business venture and a war. He throws in a bunch of bs about democracy and prosperity.

[Donna Zen]

6. That stadium deal

was just the beginning of his career of public theft while screwing the little guy.

[SharonAnn]

12. The other investors really did it, they just used * to get it done.

They bought him for his connection to GHWB.

[mediaman007]

3. Actually, the investors (Haliburton, big oil, military/industrial) have made

money in this venture. Of course the long term reach is in question. The public was never going to get their money back in this deal. They were losers from the start.

[yurbud]

4. could somebody tell this to the carrier group steaming to Iran?

Or are they that last $10 billion?

[BlackVelvetElvis]

5. This is W's story.

Not the redemption through Christ or the love of his wife or any other higher humanistic power.
Not the humility gained from contact with the working class in the Southern states or from his time spent in the National Guard.
He is nothing but a 60-year old frat boy who never learns from his mistakes, never accepts humility, is never intellectually curious enough to learn anything new or question when he makes a mistake.
You know the quote about pride. It goes here.

[Phredicles]

9. Yep - beautifully said.

+ recommended.

[EST]

7. That really is uncomfortably close to the truth.

I used to work for this guy who was the banker's bane and blessing at the same time.

He borrowed about seventy five grand, over thirty years ago, paid it down a little and then needed more money. He was a notorious slow pay, with the bank calling up and leaving priority messages, requesting a return call. He's needed bread to keep the business afloat and can't make this month's payment but they have to loan it to him, else he goes belly up and they lose all their money.

That original note has grown by about a hundred thousand and he's made a lot of interest only payments over the years.

The big difference, of course, is that he has not murdered a half million people and destroyed a large proportion of what could have been euphemistically called the "comfortably middle class."

[TygrBright]

8. As a former boss of my husband's once told him...

"If they lend you a grand, they own your ass. If they lend you a mil, you own theirs."

He was quite the critter, but in a weird, creeping-out, GOPpie-type way, he had a lot of down-home folk wisdom to dispense.

reminiscently,
Bright

[EST]

10. THe parallels are striking.

This guy, too, was my boss and he was constantly dispensing his homespun wisdom.
He was a bit of a lay minister, with a philosophy that was surprisingly liberal in several areas.

He kept a bible at the shop and was, himself, somewhat
a social metaphor, mixing an inordinate vocabulary of profanity into everything he did.

Interestingly, this mix was somehow soothing, even when he tripped over the parapet with such chestnuts as, "I'll fucking prove it-it says it right here in the the fucking bible..."

[TygrBright]

11. Dang, sounds like we know the same guy....

...we actually liked Himself's old boss in a weird way. Sort of the way slasher-film fans kind of get to rooting for Freddie or Jason.

He actually had a marshmallow component to his character-- where his checkbook and/or personal balance sheet weren't at stake, he could be astoundingly generous and philanthropic. He did have a personal "cause" (and a good one,) that he poured quite a lot of cash and effort into.

He was just crookeder than a dog's hind leg. And he'd regard that as a compliment.

reminiscently,
Bright

[alfredo]

13. K&R I tried to tell people back in 2000 that he is not

a good investment.

[KoKo]

14. This is still a good read...it's worth going to the link...really.......n/t