George Soros is a very dangerous man. What would be worse would be if the septugenarian were to die and will his billions to radical left-wing organizations like the ACLU. I shudder.

In the first place, it's not uncommon to find that people making accusations of wrongdoing are projecting; after all, how would one know what to accuse another of, unless one had done, or at least had knowledge of, wrongdoing ?

The party of CBS' TANG memos is hardly positioned to make complaints of ethical misconduct.

Secondly, FIVE billionaires met, and this was the best that they could do ??!
I've failed to see a billion dollars worth of anti-Bush ads.

It seems that they weren't really committed to "us[ing] their fortunes to engineer the defeat of [the] President".

If they were this committed to their businesses, none of them would be billionaires.

I mean, come on, a series of four well researched, well written anti-Bush mailings, from different angles, focusing on different areas of Bush's life and policies, to every household in the US, would only cost around $ 200 million.

Follow that up with some targeted mailings, and you're still only in the $ 300 million range.

What's been amusing is the continued presence of "Billionaires for Bush" at leftist events. You'd think they might go away once the Dems nominated, you know, a billionaire (or the penniless husband of one). But perhaps they're really double agents...

One thing that is certain, however, is that the guests formed a tableau that not many people would associate with the Democratic Party of the past.

Only if most people are uneducated, which sadly may be true. Throughout the history of the national Democratic Party, it's been largely financed by a very small number of incredibly wealthy sympathetic men. The Republican Party has tended to draw on a larger base of wealthy who each give less.

Some years in the early part of this century, less than a handful of men provided almost three-fourths of the Democratic Party money, according to my history books.

Soros is big enough to take down the currencies of some pretty significant countries--he once knocked down the British pound just to make money shorting it. He also has an ego of biblical proportions and the desire to remake the world to his specification.

He's cut from the same cloth as bin Laden, but far more dangerous--Soros can take control of things that bin Laden can only dream of. Consider this: France has nukes. To judge from the Oil-for-Palaces scandal, the French government can be bought for amounts which Soros would consider chicken feed.

Let me add another thought: if Kerry wins, it will be in large part due to the efforts of the 527s, to which Soros is a major contributor. Kerry will owe Soros big time. Wonder what Soros will want when he calls in his marker?

A bunch of billionaires at a secret meeting in the mountains to discuss buying elections? Was the leader named Blofeld and did they all refer to each other by numbers? Did they fly out on black helicopters?

>Imagine for just a moment how the hysterical
>Left would be reacting if these guys were
>backing George Bush? They'd be shrieking coup
>from the rooftops.

Remember, Comrades, it's only a COUP! if the other guy, i.e. those Traitors, Thought-Criminals, and Goldsteinist-Republican Stooges do it.

It's only a COUP! when it inconveniences Us (the Enlightned and Anointed) in any way.

When We (the Enlightened and Anointed) do it, it's Concern, Compassion, and The People's Will.

Long Live Big Brother!

Mike Morley:

Well, no.

Soros made a huge fortune by shorting the pound, but he didn't "knock down the pound"; he merely recognized that it was improbable that the British government could continue to prop up the pound at its then-overvalued level, and speculated on the timing of the pound's fall.

You could do the same today by shorting the Euro vs. US dollars, and going long in yuan vs. US dollars...
IF you think that you can guess when each currency will shift towards its true value vs. the US dollar.

In neither case will you be "knocking down" the Euro, or the US dollar, merely recognizing their true relative value.

Soros sounds more and more like one of the villans out of the old James Bond movies. You could just see his personal satellite interrupting all U.S. TV channels on Election Eve and annoucing if America doesn't vote for John Kerry on Nov. 2 he will begin blowing up major U.S. cities, or start aiming his satellite laser death ray at them -- all of this while he strokes his pet cat, of course.

That mean old George Soros. Always giving gobs of cash to promote democracy worldwide. Sheesh I hate that guy.

Give me Mellon Sciafe any day. That guy only gives his cash to truly good causes.

Richard Mellon Scaife. What has he funded? - darms

All Richard Mellon Scaife ever did was buy a newspaper and a magazine and cause the Clintons some PR headaches with an expose or two. Far as I know, he's not out to remake the world and build a new society.

I give Soros credit for doing good in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I don't think his present project is quite so benign.

Richard Mellon Scaife has given millions to:

� The '72 Nixon campaign
� GOPAC, Newt Gingrich's outfit
� The Heritage Foundation
� The American Enterprise Institute
� Stanford University's Hoover Institution
� 'The American Spectator' (Until a book, "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster", written by a reporter at Scaife's paper, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, got a bad review in TAS).

Also, hundreds of thousands to the Cato Institute.

He is primarily to whom Hillary Clinton was refering when she spoke of "the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy".

Michael - Before you dismiss their billions, see how much cheating & turnout it buys. Most of their money has gone into voter registration drives plus get out the vote efforts.

I've seen a couple of articles indicating that experienced oil traders see no basis for oil to be over $50/bbl. It wouldn't surprise me if some of this money is flowing that direction.

I don't understand why everyone has all of these conspiracy theories about "billionaires for kerry", but I have a theory - you need conspiracies to see malintenion. the fact is these billionaires support Kerry because they believe in his policies. they can support him to their own financial detriment because they can afford to. Who cares what your taxes are if you have billions. What is far more insidious (and transparent) is the large donations by corporate bodies mainly to the republican party.

It's perfectly in their right to do everything within current campaign finance laws they can to get Kerry elected. But flip their support around and have that many people with that much money holding secret meetings to help re-elect Bush, and there would be Trilateral Commission-like conspiracy theorys abounding and CBS News producers would be scattered across the countryside alerting the populus to the dangers of such an arrangement.

...and then some pro-Kerry 527 would do an ad portrying the evil billionaires who are secretly trying to control the government and get an actor to play scheming billionaire Bush supporter George Soros. Stroking his cat.

Many billionaires made their piles by trading with the government or taking advantage of their ability to exploit insider knowledge of government activity. Many are in industries like recycling which are the creation of government. Others are the recipients of government largesse in the form of broadcasting licenses or banking charters.

These are not creative capitalists, they are instead a group of chessy, self-dealing boodlers and influence peddlers.

J Hardman--

What is far more insidious (and transparent) is the large donations by corporate bodies mainly to the republican party.

I suppose. What about the large donations by mainstream media companies mainly to the Democratic Party, even while they claim to be nonpartisan?

The transparency is the key. The GOP is good for the economy so business contributes. The Democrats share the antihuman values of a few plutocrats, who have to try and keep their meetings and purposes secret.