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Global Eye -- Blood Kin
...In our new, more enlightened age, we humbly accept -- even celebrate -- the special privileges accorded to the great ones among us. And so, with a couple of honorable exceptions, the big-time American media lay a nice soft comfy quilt of silence over last month's revelations about presidential brother Neil Bush -- details which emerged from the nasty divorce suit Neil brought upon himself by his flagrant adultery with a close family friend.

While others quilted, the Los Angeles Times and Houston Chronicle detailed Brother Neil's big "consulting" contract with Jiang Mianheng, son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Young Jiang and his well-connected Communist capitalists are paying Neil $2 million in stock for his "advice" on manufacturing high-tech computer circuits -- despite Neil's sworn oath that he has "absolutely no background" in the field. "But I've been working in Asia for a long time," he added.

He certainly has. Neil also admitted that he'd experienced carnal canoodling with several anonymous women during his business jaunts to Asia over the years. He told the divorce court that these brazen hussies had simply knocked on his hotel door, came in and had sex with him. These encounters were not emollients offered by the businessmen courting his favor and royal name, Neil insisted. Why, he's not even sure the women actually were prostitutes, because "they never asked for money and I didn't pay them." If it's true, as he swears under oath, that he didn't know why those women were there, then the best you can say about Brother Neil is that he is an idiot of the highest order.

But of course Neil is no idiot. He first entered the public eye for a sweet deal he pulled during the Reagan-Bush years. As a director of a Colorado savings-and-loan bank, he steered $100 million of homeowners' savings to his own business partners -- without telling his fellow directors of the personal connection. The partners defaulted, and Bush, using his family links to Argentine strongman Carlos Menem, tried to hide the scam in a bait-and-switch south of the border, as The Austin Chronicle reports. When the feds finally caught up with him in 1990, Bush had cost American taxpayers $1.3 billion in bailouts to cover his mismanagement. As the son of the sitting president, Neil could not possibly go to jail for stealing $100 million; the high-born don't do hard time. No, he was merely fined $50,000 and banned from all banking activities. Naturally, Neil didn't pay his own fine; fat-cat Republican fundraisers covered it for him.

We told you he was no idiot.

Now comes the sweetest deal of all -- enriched by the blood sugar seeping out from the bodies of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Yes, Neil has dipped his silver spoon into the reconstruction gravy being ladled out by his brother George, the White House warlord. Neil is now being paid a fat annual fee to "help companies secure contracts in Iraq," the Financial Times reports. ...