The G.W. Bush Liberry

It's never too early to start thinking about it.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/08/INGI882MQB1.DTL

 

The Bill Clinton Library is already open.

 

Clinton doesn't need the porn. That's for the self-hating Republican geeks.

 

I went to the George W. Bush library, but it was closed. The book was checked out.

 

I got it I am colouring it in.

 

I'm guessing it's a bible coloring book.

 

I forgot

Which one of you guys graduated from both Yale and Harvard?

 

More liberal democrat rantings, huh?

 

No, just more Neo Con rantings (you know, everything that comes out of Ann Coulter's mouth!)

http://www.ericblumrich.com/ihr.html

 

Re: I forgot

Which says a lot more about privilege than Bush's academic ability.

 

"Which says a lot more about privilege than Bush's academic ability."

1) Maybe so, but he still did the work and graduated. Not everybody who attends these schools graduates. Even so, alot of the "priviliged" don't bother to go to graduate school. And how many of the wealthy do you ever hear called "Dr."

2) I suppose there are none from the ranks of the underpriviliged who have achieved the same goal?

3) If I were President, I wouldn't read the newspaper, either. Or watch Jay Leno until I was out of office. The media wouldn't ever think of publishing anything out of context, would they? Why would you rely on the media for your info, when most of it is BS? (Although the Intelligence Community is taking alot of flak these days).

4) Somehow, Gore was "presumed" to be more intelligent than Bush. However, his background was quite the same. He went to a private school and got into Harvard, without being an A student. His grades at Harvard were not stellar, he failed out of seminary school and then dropped out of a non-Ivy League law school. He then invented the internet.

5) Bush is not that priviliged since he's had to work his whole life. Even though it's not considered "work" to you, it's still considered "work" to the truly wealthy.

 

Re: Re: I forgot

Yale, quite possibly -- for both Bush and Kerry.

Harvard Business School (and Boston College Law School), probably not.

Which raises the question why Sen Kerry went to BC instead of, say, Harvard.

 

Re: Re: I forgot

Perhaps his last name got him through Yale....I don't know.

However, as I've stated here several times (and people continually ignore this because it negates their argument), my sister-in-law is a Harvard Business School graduate.

She is emphatic that while a name may get you into HBS, NO ONE is cut any slack whatsoever once they're in. A classmate of hers was Abigail Johnson.....her father founded Fidelity Investments, and she was cut no slack at all. If you can't perform up to standards, you're gone. They're not going to dilute the value of a Harvard M.B.A. because someone's daddy is famous.

Bush is a bad public speaker, but people who call him dumb or stupid are just ignorant. I'm a pretty good public speaker, but I'd probably last a week at Harvard Business School.

 

Unfortunately, we live in a real world Bruce. Nothing is set in stone and people have, and do, get breaks even in the toughest professions and the toughest schools. To deny this is denying human nature at its worst.

Dubya was not only the son of an important Father and Grandfather, the Bush family had given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the school. If you think that has no influence, then you do live in a world that doesn't exist.

 

In other words, you'll simply adapt & rationalize anything & everything to justify your argument.

What part of "If you can't perform up to standards, you're gone" did you not understand? That comes from a Harvard M.B.A., who, I would venture to say, knows a bit more about the standards at HBS than you do.

I really, really disliked Al Gore in the 2000 election, but even though there was/is more than ample ammunition, I never tried to insinuate that he was stupid or dumb.

Pulling stuff like that just shows you have an intellectually bankrupt argument.

 

Bush benefited from his own form of affirmative action in getting in to both Yale and Harvard.

Bush did not deserve admission to either based on his academic achievements. By his own admission he was a C student at Yale. He has never released his GMAT scores.

I think it’s fair to say that NO ONE gets into HBS with a C average unless he or she has done something truly extraordinary (or has some very influential connections). Though HBS is more competitive today, I would guess that that was true in Bush’s day too.

His performance at HBS is sketchy at best, because he has not released his grades. Though Michael Kranish of the Globe was trashed by Orson on another thread, he presents a pretty balanced view of Bush’s time there.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/bush/articles/1999/12/28/hallmarks_of_bush_style_were_seen_at_harvard/

He states:
“For some, the memories of him remain vivid. One of Bush's former professors, Howard Stevenson, recalled Bush as a student who "wrote a decent essay," and "didn't bust his tail" trying to be a top scholar, but who did show genuine leadership potential. Former classmate Bill Strong, who photographed Bush for the Harvard yearbook, added tellingly, "I marvel 25 years later; the charisma was there." By all accounts, Bush was a middle-of-the-pack student who, far from being casual about classwork, had to work extra hard to keep up with the assemblage of the best and the brightest who got into the B-school.”

So Bush probably did work pretty hard just to survive. The article goes on to say that he was helped by the case study format at Harvard, which emphasizes participation over test performance. Much of the coursework is done in groups, which tends to smooth out everyone’s performance.

He was able to matriculate at this country’s best schools in spite of the fact that he did not deserve to even set foot at those places.

He has gone on record as being opposed to the University of Michigan’s policy of considering race in admissions, even though he benefited from just such a system that considered money and connections. He recently went on record as being opposed to the consideration of legacies in admissions. Again, he owes his present status to just such considerations.

Here's a guy who thinks a black student with a 3.5 average should not get preference over a white student with a 3.7 at UofM law school. How many qualified students did he push aside at HBS with his 2.0?

He’s a complete hypocrite. One would be hard pressed to find anyone who made it to the White House who was less distinguished.

Supporters talk here about how me "made it through HBS," as if to say "Look, he's not dumb as a stump." Is that really a sterling endorsement of his qualifications?

Can anyone point to anything in his employment or academic background at which he truly distinguished himself? Anything at all?

Clearly there's nothing in his academic background. He can't make speeches. He hasn't written anything worth reading. His positions in the corporate world were largely sinecures. Essentially he took high salaries while he trashed the companies, and then got out with his stock options before the stock prices tanked.

His presidency has been marked by missteps and poor planning. His low approval ratings are evidence of how he has failed. Worse yet, he is too stubborn to even consider that some changes need to be made.

Some talk of his leadership qualities. An example was his actions after 9/11. At the National Memorial he said, "This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing." He got lots or praise for tough talk like that, but of course, the words ring hollow now. It's clear, in a world of increasing tension and frequent and ambiguous terrorist alerts, that we have very little choice in how this conflict will end. Bush admits now that this struggle will go on for years and years.

Even in the election he needed the Supreme Court to bail him out. There is no reason why he should ever have become President, and no reason why he should remain.

 

Bush IS dumb..... period.

It isn't so much being intellectually bankrupt as being very astute at observing body language. That combined with the actual results of his hair-brained decisions (no WMD, Iraqi quagmire, no Osama, economy in ruins, etc.).

As for the body language, you can't honestly tell me that you can't derive a person's basic level of intelligence from just watching them for a while.... Well, we've all seen plenty of dubya now, and Michael Moore showed us "more" so to speak....

I will bet my life right here right now that 95% of everyone on this discussion board is smarter than President George W. Bush. That much I can tell just from the wise-ass comments I read...

 

I recall a letter in the New Yorker about 4 years ago from, if memory serves, a Yale admissions guy who said that Bush's Yale transcript (which the New Yorker had published the week before) showed him doing better than they expected based on his prep school marks and test scores.

Which raises three new questions: What was the average grade in the late '60s at Yale ? Did one take the GMAT in the early '70s for an MBA? And what did Sen Kerry's grades at Yale look like?

 

Bill Bradley at Princeton

Bill Bradley had a 485 Verbal SAT, yet graduated magna cum laude (history) from Princeton and later became a Rhodes Scholar. Oh, and he was a damn fine basketball player.

(Note to those who took the SAT after 1992 or so -- the exam was renormed about then, so add ~100 points to his score to get yours. Check the ETS website for exact details.)

 

No, that's just the most obvious way to refute the annoyingly repetitive tripe about how he's supposed to be "dumb as a stump". Using your reasoning, all children of those with wealth and/or power can skate through Harvard. If this is true, then why is Harvard still one of the most prestigious universities in the world if they're willing to hand out diplomas to the rich? It's bullshit, and you know it. Harvard doesn't need any more money, trust me.

Missteps and poor planning....let's see.....the Taliban is gone along with the terrorist training camps in Afgahanistan, the leadership of Al-Qaeda has been dismantled and the organization is effectively neutered, a mass-murdering dictator along the lines of Hitler who swore revenge against the US has been removed from power, there hasn't been a single terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 (in spite of the liberal media who seem to almost want one) and the economy is undergoing the most rapid growth in 30 years. If that's missteps and poor planning, I'll take it.

That's patently untrue, and I have a feeling that you know it. Every which way they counted the ballots after the election, Bush still won. Saying otherwise over & over again is not going to change things. Deal with it.