| SamuelRSmith said: I disagree with the Bush intelligence comment (graduated from Yale and Harvard, got over a 1500% return on a baseball team he bought and later sold, etc, etc). Not only that, I don't think intelligence is necessarily great for leadership. Obama and Gordon Brown were both considered to be very intelligent people... generally those who are more cock-sure of their intelligence are less likely to listen to the people around them (Perry is reknown for constantly seeking advice from his advisors and aides). Furthermore, I don't care about his religious views. He's a state-rights kinda guy. He's not going to criminialize gay sex, gay marriage, abortion, etc... mainly because his aides won't allow him to. If Obama wins 2012, I fear the state of America by the time the 2016 election rolls around. Perry might make the USA a more conservative place, but Obama will make it a more socialized place. I don't like either, but I know which one I prefer. |
If you want to back up Bush then you are going to have a very hard time. Fact is Bush is a failure. He drove his oil companies into bankruptcy yet was able to cash out his stocks right before the companies went bunk.
"George Bush, Junior sold 60% of his stock in Harken Oil in June, 1990 for $848,560. That was brilliant timing; in August, Iraq invaded Kuwait and Harken's stock dropped 25%. Soon after, a big quarterly loss caused it to drop further.
Furthermore, Harken's internal financial advisers at Smith Barney had issued a report in May warning of the company's deteriorating finances. Harken owed more than $150 million to banks and other creditors at the time. George Bush, Jr. was a member of the board and also of Harken's restructuring committee, which met in May and worked directly with the Smith Barney consultants. He must have known of these warnings.
These are pretty clear-cut indications of illegal insider trading. The Securities and Exchange Commission, controlled at the time by President George Bush, investigated but chose not to press charges.
Junior also violated another SEC rule explicitly. He was required to register his sale as an insider trade by July 10, 1990, but didn't until March 1991, after the Gulf War was over. He was not punished or cited."
If you want to cite him owning the Texas Rangers as a positive then maybe you should think twice..
"University of Texas' Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) chairman, Tom Hicks, now owns the Texas Rangers; his purchase of the team made Governor Bush a very rich man. Furthermore, Hicks and his brother gave $146,000 to the Bush campaign. In return, $252 million of the invested money went to funds run by Hicks' business associates or friends, according to the Houston Chronicle. Hicks even insisted that UTIMCO increase by $10 million an investment with a fund that he had an indirect financial interest in, but UTIMCO staff halted funding after they discovered the conflict. Another key player in the Bush world is Richard Rainwater, the billionaire Texas investor who made Bush Jr.'s original involvement in the Texas Rangers deal possible. That's the deal that made Jr. rich, of course. Bush had several other personal investments in Rainwater controlled companies. But Rainwater has received much from Bush and the state of Texas' treasury, too. UTIMCO invested at least $20 million in Rainwater companies."
Bush mainly got into the Ivy league schools because of his family (father). He was at best C student. He was an alcoholic and a cokehead. Anything Bush did before being Governor of Texas would be looked at as a failure or as a criminal. I don't want to turn this thread into a complete Bush bashing but please just avoid trying to prop him up. He did nothing good for the country and only made things worse. Amazing that gas prices went from 1.47 - a little over 3 dollars per gallon in about 6 years of him being President. I suppose this had nothing to do with him and Cheney coming from the oil industry. Oil companies need all the help they can get to set record profits every year. He trampled all over the laws and even declared himself above the law (aka signing the torture bill but saying he didn't have to follow it).
