It turns out that Barbara Bush's donation to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund is going straight to Ignite!, an educational software company owned by Neil Bush, the current administration's very own "Billy Carter/Roger Clinton" type character. (You may remember Neil as the fellow who headed Silverado Savings & Loan in the 80s. When the bank failed under his watch, he walked away with a mere sanction while taxpayers were forced to clean up his mess by forking over a $1 billion bailout.)
In his Talking Points Memo, Joshua Micah Marshall says Ignite! makes its money by jetting Neil to exotic locales, where he visits "international statesmen, bigwigs and criminals who want to 'invest' in Ignite! as a way to curry favor with the brother in the White House."
(Bush's international influence-peddling jaunts have also proven to be a great way for him to get laid, according to CNN:
[Bush] admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.
The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.
"Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," Brown said.
"It was very unusual," Bush said.)
It turns out that lots of people besides Barbara Bush believe in her energetic young man: the rich kids of China's rulers, the United Arab Emirates, and Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky (who has been accused of trying to overthrow Putin's government to help his company) are all eager investors in Ignite!. Now, who's to say that the individuals in this rogues' gallery are only interested in getting the president to think kindly of them? Perhaps they truly want to help children learn.
Let's have some fun: what kinds of children's educational software might be produced buy Ignite!, were these investors to have a say in their development? Email your ideas for titles and descriptions to me and I'll post the best on Boing Boing.
Link (Thanks, Haybales!)
Reader comment: Phil says:
After seeing the post earilier today about Neil Bush, I got to
wondering what other Bush siblings have been up to. Here's an
interesting [Wikipedia] entry on Marvin Bush (the youngest of the Bush brothers):"He was a director of the Sterling, Virginia company Securacom, also
known as Stratesec, from 1993 until fiscal year 2000. The
Securacom/Stratesec company was publicly traded and backed by an
investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corporation. Securacom/Stratesec
was in charge of security at the World Trade Center, Dulles
International Airport, and United Airlines on September 11, 2001."
Reader comment: Leslie says:
The Wikipedia claim about Marvin Bush's ties to 9/11 seemed a little too "conspiracy theory" to me. A quick Google search turned up what looks like a more balanced view. I'm no Bush fan, far from it, but there is enough REAL evil stuff about these guys without manufacturing conspiracy.
Link
Reader comment: John says: "THIS is the funniest Bush I've seen all year." (It's a video of 19-year-old Pierce Bush, the President's nephew, out of his mind on coffee at 6:30 am)
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