I guess a person really can have too many friends.

Such was the reason Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates gave for having to quit the social networking site Facebook.

Makes one wonder if all these people wanted his friendship, or his money.

As reported by AFP Saturday (h/t Rachel Alexander):

On Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Anthony Mason made an observation rarely expressed in the mainstream media – that when the rich get richer, they do so by creating jobs that benefit everyone. Mason: "Two-thirds of these billionaires are self-made. They're the pioneering businessmen like Bill Gates who created the companies that have created the jobs and the wealth in this country. So we want them to get richer because when they do, we do."

Mason’s comments came after he had filed a report in which he filled in viewers on the staggering amount of wealth that has been lost by the world’s billionaires since last year. After he concluded by pointing out that "the pain of this recession is unrelenting and everywhere – from the bottom all the way to the top," anchor Katie Couric brought up the sentiment of class envy that many feel toward the wealthy, inviting Mason to explain why it is "short-sighted" for people to rejoice in the bad fortunes of the wealthy. Couric: "Having said that, Anthony, a lot of people aren't going to feel real sorry for these folks, even though on average they lost about 25 percent of their wealth. But you say that's shortsighted?"

Admission: over the course of my NewsBusting, I've actually developed a certain admiration for Bob Herbert. Not that I agree with virtually anything the NY Times columnist has to say, but that I appreciate his directness and the absence in his work of the superfluous sarcasm that marks that of a number of his colleagues.

That said, I offer up Herbert's lament of this morning, "Where Are the Big Ideas?", as the epitome of wrong-headed liberal thinking. Herbert's complaint is that when it comes to the role of government, the presidential candidates aren't thinking big enough. Hillary and Obama's proposals to subject 1/7th of the nation's economy [or whatever the current proportion that health care represents] to government control are small beer in Bob's eyes. He dismisses their plans as "masterpieces of minutiae."

Herbert says that "the essential question the candidates should be trying to answer — but that is not even being asked very often — is how to create good jobs in the 21st century." The columnist gives us an idea of the kind of big-government thinking he has in mind to answer his question:

Since 2000, the mainstream media has conducted a war against the Bush Adminstration the likes of which have not been seen since their equally vitriolic campaign against Richard Nixon. They have refused to publish anything positive about Bush or his Administration, they have manufactured scandals out of nothing (Valerie Plame) while doing their best to expose secret operations that are protecting Americans and they have consistently refused to accurately report the good economic news.

Today comes even more evidence of just how badly the press has failed in their duty to report to the American public. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft corporation, spoke to a forum to discuss fighting malaria. As reported by Power Line, Gates said,