This & That, Ceci et Cela

Oh the ties that bind thee.  A group with members like the Bushes, the Vatican, bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and China’s Communist overlords, among others?

“It seemed, at first, like nothing more than a novelty item in the news briefs, the kind of odd, meaningless side-fact thrown off by most major stories: “New Pope, President’s Brother Had Link in Swiss Group.” But a look beneath the surface of this innocuous connection reveals a vast web of sinister alliances — and moral corruption on a world-shaking scale. … At the center of this particular nexus is the unlikely figure of Neil Bush, the feckless, fraudulent brother of the current president. Neilsy, as he’s known in the family, is most famous for costing American taxpayers $1 billion to bail out a savings-and-loan he had ruined with secret insider loans to his own business partners. For this massive fraud, he was fined — by his father’s administration — the princely sum of $50,000, which was actually paid by one of his dad’s political bagmen, of course” (Moscow Times).