When I read this, I imagined something like one of those old “superhero stops bad guy with the tasty power of hostess snack cakes” ads from the back of comic books.
“I know what will stop the looters and snipers. Thin Mints!!!”
I know. Shocking, isn’t it? 
It may be what *you *know him for, but obviously most people don’t agree given that he keeps winning elections.
Well, who knows, but I doubt it. He wasn’t perceived as an ineffectual dolt after two terms as governor in Texas. I doubt seriously that either you or I could step into that office and function well enough even to win reelection, much less become president…
This country is full of rich boys and I don’t see any of them accomplishing 1/100th of what Bush has. You don’t have to like Bush but you seem too smart to believe this stuff you’re spouting. I fear your emotions have gotten the better of you in this regard.
He did have that rep from January 20 to September 10, 2000, but it wasn’t entirely his fault.
Not to answer for her, but I suppose you could say that most of them aren’t named Bush, and aren’t the son of a former Prez. 
Funny how the anti-Cindy crew haven’t commented on Brian Williams’s use of “occupation.” Why would that be? Oh yeah, because it’s much more fun to bash a grieving mom.
As for Bush being a “self-made” anything … that’s possibly the most blindly ignorant or disingenuous comment I’ve seen in a long time. Well, okay, at least in the past 24 hours since I last read any Bush-praising remarks. (Blind ignorance and disingenuousness being the hallmarks of the increasing minority who think Bush is a good president.)
MsRobyn made a great start of explaining just how much Bush has ridden on the coattails of Poppy and his pals. Let’s take a more detailed look at the absurd notion that Bush is “self-made.”
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After college, Bush took a $20,000 gift from his family to begin his quest to emulate Poppy as an oil businessman. A few years and a failed attempt for a Congress seat later – so much for “never lost an election,” huh, StarvingArtist? – Bush formed “Arbusto,” an oil co. named after himself. (Arbusto = Bush in Spanish for those few of you who weren’t aware.)
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When Arbusto nearly went belly-up not too long afterwards, in swept Uncle Jonathan Bush to provide needed funds and reorganize the co. as an investment firm. The investors? Mostly members of Bush’s family.
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This newly regrouped co. foundered as well, and so did W’s follow-up oil exploration company. Fortunately, Dubya’s connections came through again. Money came floating in courtesy of James Baker III (you know who he is, right, StarvingArtist?), who encouraged his pal Philip Uzielli to hand over $1 mill to keep Bush solvent.
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That didn’t do enough. Coming to the rescue this time was Spectrum 7, which bought “Bush Exploration” and kept Dubya on board as president. After all, despite having no successes to date, Dubya had one true quality that made him irreplaceable: his father was now Vice President. That’s a useful connection for any oil company to have. Dubya received several million for his percentage of Arbusto/Bush Exploration. Arbusto’s other original investors only earned cents on the dollar for their shares. Go figure.
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Spectrum 7 went downwards too a few years later. Would no one save Bush from himself? Don’t be silly, as long as Bush has relatives, he’ll always have a safety net. The company that stepped in this time was Harken, an investment firm with moolah from Saudis, George Soros (ironic, no?) and other wealthy types. Harken too saw Dubya’s immense value as figurehead and kept him on.
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Dubya decided to branch out into sports. He used his position as a director of a bank to borrow the money to purchase the Texas Rangers, along with other investors who (not coincidentally) were contributors to Poppy’s presidential campaign. Now that Dubya was the son of a President, he had even more worth. For no apparent reason than to suck up to Poppy, the other Rangers owners gave Dubya 12% of the club, although he’d only paid for about 2%.
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You know how Dubya’s so vociferously against taxes? That doesn’t count when taxes would actually improve his own wallet. So when he and the other owners decided the Rangers needed a new ballpark, Dubya lobbied for a sales tax hike to help pay expenses. After threatening to take the team elsewhere, Dubya won his first real victory: the increased sales tax. Good on ya, W!
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Couple o’ years later, Bush and his fellow owners sold the team for several times what they paid for it. Bush garnered $14 million in stock. But to close the baseball chapter of his life, Dubya still had to pay back the loan from the bank used to purchase the team in the first place. How would he do this?
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Accordingly, he sold some of his Harken stock. Bush nabbed nearly a million from this transaction, a rather tidy sum … but seemingly not memorable enough for Dubya to report to the SEC. He waited a year to file the report.
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Oh, here’s a funny coinkidink: a week after Bush sold his shares for $800K, Harken revealed major losses to the public, and its stock plummeted. Gosh, one might almost think Bush had foreknowledge of the company’s fiscal problems, explaining why he sold when he did. But no, that would be insider trading, and surely the SEC would have picked up on that! (Hmm, that delayed SEC report suddenly makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?) Luckily, the SEC under Poppy Bush’s administration decided that Dubya didn’t know anything about the upcoming losses prior to selling his stock. An understandable assumption, considering just how little Dubya knew about anything at all.
All this information and much more is easily accessible courtesy of books such as (conservative) Kevin Phillips’ inestimable American Dynasty and Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud.
Sorry for the hijack. Just fighting ignorance, don’tcha know.
Just because he wins elections doesn’t make him a great man. Clinton, after all, won re-election and still had people calling for his head on a pike, and that was for lying about a blowjob. Bush’s lies, OTOH, cost people their lives.
Need I say more?
Robin
No, I’d say that most of his accomplishments were made prior to his father becoming president. But that notwithstanding, I’d also point out that every president I can recall has had children and none of them has accomplished much other than to get elected to some relatively minor office or become a radio or television personality.
I know you guys hate Bush, but the fact of the matter is that his accomplishents are truly astonishing. The number of career politicians who have been unable to acheive the presidency is legion, yet Bush comes from out of nowhere and gets elected twice to the governorship of Texas and twice more as president of the United States.
I would think it should be obvious to anyone that it takes a lot more to get elected to the presidency than simply having a father who was president once himself. To accomplish what Bush has requires intelligence, drive, focus, determination, a thick skin, and the ability to function effectively in the face of massive and determined opposition. None of these qualities come automatically as the result of having a presidential parent, as the children of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton have demonstrated. Bush is an extraordinary guy who only appears ordinary, and I fear that appearance makes it hard for someone like you to see that he really has a lot on the ball.
Hey, Granny, how ya doin’? Long time, no see, but my luck just ran out it seems.
Anyway, I bow to you apparently superior knowledge of the ins and outs of Bush’s business career, I don’t know enough about it in detail but I suspect that as always there are two sides to every story and that there are many knowledgeable people in the business world who would argue with your analysis…however my own detailed knowledge of the day-to-day workings of his business career are scant so I won’t argue them here. But I will reiterate that he functioned perfectly well as governor of Texas and not only won reelection but developed a reputation as someone who could work effectively with both Democrats and Republicans. How could such a startling failure at business manage to become so effective overnight once he was in office. Again, I’ll say he’s got a lot more on the ball than anyone here is willing to acknowledge.
Thanks, choie. When I posted that, I had about six zillion things going on and so I couldn’t finish.
Starving Artist, thanks to Bush’s buddy Turdblossom, the Democratic party is so neutered, Bush doesn’t need to work with them, because the Republican majority will do as he wants. And this is true not only in Washington, but in Texas.
And I can give you not only one, but two examples of sons of the rich n’ famous who went on to become powerful in their own right, but who were helped by family connections: John F. Kennedy and Al Gore.
Robin
A minor point on Bush’s success as Governor of Texas: The Texas Governor has far less power relative to his position than the POTUS, or than many other Governors. It’s largely a power sharing job and it requires 2/3 legislative majorities to get a lot done, which forces even a recalcitrant partisan to reach out to the other party.
http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/html/exec/print_exec.html
I guess you could say that. It would be false, but you could say it.
Wow, that Turdblossom is some powerful guy! And here all this time I thought it was the Dems’ agenda that has been doing them in. (Well, that and fifty or sixty years of failed policies that have shown the country that, while well-intentioned (at the grass roots level, that is, and not the cynical buy-votes-with-the-voters’-own-money politicians), Democrat (read “liberal”) policies do not work when faced with the realities of human nature.
I’m sure you’re right, but that wasn’t the point. **Marley23 **said Bush became president because he had the advantage of having a father who was president. I pointed out that no other presidential offspring has had much of a career in politics at all, much less getting elected twice to the governorship of Texas and twice again as POTUS.
(And on preview, thanks for the info Larry. Still, various and sundry other Texas governors have been unable to function as effectively as Bush did in that office. Ann Richards comes quickly to mind in this regard.)
I was speaking primarily of his private enterprise days when I said that, but I can see how there’s plenty of room for confusion. Certainly his political career has flourished during the time of his (one term) father’s ascendancy. It wasn’t my intention to make a false statement, it just worked out that way.
Starving Artist: “The Democrats have 50 or 60 years of failed policies, but George W. Bush is a successful businessman.”
Folks, I just don’t think one can make a dent in such blind, raging stupidity as this. Good luck!
Yeah, I think I’m gonna call it a night. I’ve got three new Netflix movies and a pint of Ben n’ Jerry’s Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt. Since *Starving Artist is denser than bad fudge, I think I’ll just focus my attention to This Is Spinal Tap. Much more rewarding experience.
Robin
True. But it does counter the argument that he is an incapable man.
Since we’re fighting ignorance and all, he didn’t just lie, he lied under oath in a court of law. He perjured himself. There is a difference.
I don’t want to turn this into a hijack, but would you kindly point out exactly what he lied about and offer proof of those lies?
Unfortunately JFK will forever be tainted by how his father used power to help his son (he was a very capable man even without his father) and how old Bootleg Joe acquired that power.
And Al Gore, born with every benefit a future politician could ever hope for, is done. He will never be President. His only value surfacing around election times to cry about 2000. On the other hand, he did invent the internet.
Almost 3.4 million votes isn’t exactly the “barest of margins”.
As one of the other parties in that debate, and the only one who used the term “sea change”, I believe your recollection is inaccurate.
You were told that she’s the temporal face on a wider public realization about the American President’s lack of honesty. And you were told that this realization would continue with or without Cindy Sheehan’s face and voice in the news; without her it would/will be someone else.
I think both parts of that still hold true. She’s still a public representation of a growing movement, her lack of polish and intellectual rigor notwithstanding. (And as choie has demonstrated, the phrase “occupied New Orleans” is not exactly inapt or irrelevant.)
And as for the other part, about the public realization, well… once it hits you, you just can’t unrealize that your President’s a sociopathic piece of shit.
Well, you didn’t say it that pretty the first time. I meant an accurate paraphrase which is why I used some of your actual words. If it’s unsatisfactory to you, I accept you correction.
Inept, irrelevant, and offensive is how I see it, and I swear on my children I’d think exactly the same no matter who was in office.
I have a problem with “sociopathic piece of shit.” I’d like you to consider my problem and see if you understand my point.
“Sociopathic piece of shit” is just another cool sounding derogatory phrase. Beyond that it is valueless and undebatable. You might as well be calling him a “motherfucker,” “Asshole” “buttwipe,” “weenie” or what have you.
If I say “How can anyone vote for John Kerry once they realize he’s a douchebag?” I haven’t made a very good argument or asked a good question.
If I say “How can anyone vote for John Kerry once they realize he’s a self-confessed war criminal?” I’ve actually made an argument, and a debatable point.
This is the 'Pit, so I said “sociopathic piece of shit”, 'cause it felt good to say that about the sociopathic piece of shit who’s our current POTUS.
Here’s an arguable characterization (and the way I might have phrased it in Great Debates, where , as I just mentioned, we aint at): Once one has come to a realization (or decided, if you prefer) that the President has lied to the country about his reasons for war, it colors one’s appreciation for all of his other public statements and actions. One tends to greet his pronouncements with at least some degree of skepticism, to look for shades and hidden motives, and to notice any disconnects between his words and the actions of his administration.
Dash it all, man! You’re in the Pit, sir! the Pit, I say! Where is permitted the spiteful snarkery, the venemous vituperation. Surely, “sociopath” is a wild exaggeration of a man more marked by mediocrity than any spectacular embodiment of evil. Elmer Fudd thinks he’s Winston Churhill, GeeDubya shaves and beholds in the mirror a Leader of Men, destined to leave giant footprints in the mud of history. He suffers from delusions of competence. Or rather, he has the delusions, it is we who do the suffering.
Your reference to rhetorical niceties is a bit tin-eared, don’t you think? Over in the tea room, GD, rules of evidence, propriety, all that there is jealously guarded, here, it is as out of place as a soda-water sermon in a bawdy house.
Such would be a “realization” without basis in fact, unless of course you could do what magellan01 asked of MsRobyn (and which she was apparently unable to do) and “kindly point out exactly what he lied about and offer proof of those lies?”. A supposition does not equate to unassailable fact.