The 2003 Chairman’s Letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway was released this morning, and Warren Buffett gets in a couple of subtle digs at the Bush administration. The best one was this one on page 19, regarding the opening of a new Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM) store in Kansas City:

“Victory,” President Kennedy told us after the Bay of Pigs disaster, “has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” At NFM, we knew we had a winner a month after the boffo opening in Kansas City, when our new store attracted an unexpected paternity claim. A speaker there, referring to the Blumkin family [the founders of NFM], asserted, “they had enough confidence and the policies of the Administration were working such that they were able to provide work for 1,000 of our fellow citizens.” The proud papa at the podium? President George W. Bush.

We'll see if the President ever speaks at a Berkshire-owned store again.