I can't believe what I heard on the Larry King show this afternoon. King had GW and Laura on the show. Baby Bush actually said he respected Ken Lay! Actually, he started to say RES, then cut himself short. Incredible. Of course Baby Bush went on to say other words of praise for the late Lay. Let's not forget this scumbag defrauded a lot of seniors out of their pensions and was scheduled to go to prison. I guess he and Baby B were meant for each other. What a disgrace of a President! Abner
Nobody would ever accuse President Bush of being silver-tongued, would they? I didn't see the interview, but in the President's defense, I would say that it is inappropriate to speak ill of the dead, and often bad luck to do so as well. Dave
Re: Re: Baby B respects Ken Lay? He comes by it honestly. I remember Ann Richards's quip that his father (George Bush the elder) was "born with a silver foot in his mouth." -=Steve=-
Yeah, birds of a feather. There are some real similarities. Since Lay's death, many of his friends have spoken about what a nice guy he was. Bush's allies say the same thing. You know, a great guy to have a beer with (I know he doesn't drink, but figuratively). You can be a great guy with your friends and cronies, but an absolute lying crook with the public at large. Lay and his wife were living on the Pabst range when he died. The Pabst heir was saying what a nice guy he was. Well sure, would you expect anything less? I suspect all his millionaire friends loved him, but he lied to his company and his investors, even while he was running like a gutless chicken. He absolutely ruined people’s lives, and, like Bush, had absolutely no capacity to admit even the slightest error. Ironically, in the end, he couldn’t even be honest with himself, perhaps out of the fear that it would ruin his perception of himself. Instead, it killed him. Lay’s position was completely untenable. If you believed him, you had to believe he was the most incompetent CEO in history. He had absolutely no idea about the level of fraud in his company? He had an ironclad responsibility to his employees and shareholders to know what his company was doing, and he claims he had none. By definition he was an absolute failure as a CEO. The other side was that he knew what was happening, and was therefore one of the greatest corporate criminals in history. Talk about the proverbial rock and a hard place. No wonder it killed him. Sadly, he might have fared better in public opinion, and perhaps even lived, if he had just owned up to his colossal mistakes. He couldn’t do it. Talk about denial. He’s no martyr, just a crook, a crook loved by his family and cronies, and despised by a huge portion of the public, it seems. And the same is true for Lay.
