Ochi reason number one...

[Grumpy]

Ochi, you asked for more substantive reasons for my severe dislike and lack or respect and strong disagreement with the policy decisions of George Bush Jr....

BTW, Freedom Fries...boy, they are useing there time well down there....I have many French friends in NYC, they are laughing harder today...how embaressing....


Anyway, here is one reason, and I will continue to list my issues in this thread, feel free to comment as you see fit. Anyone else of course is welcome to comment as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/...l.ap/index.html

Read that article please. My reasons for disagreeing this policy are simple, I prefer if humans do not destroy the earth.

More to come...

[Grumpy]

From a website entitled realchange.org...

"Insider Business Deals
Bush Jr. has made a lot of money off of three business deals. In each one, his contribution is hard to perceive, yet he walked off with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in deals arranged by his father's political cronies. The deals were
1. the sale of Junior's struggling oil company,
2. Junior's sale of oil stock just before the Gulf War, and
3. getting a cheap slice of the Texas Rangers baseball team, which he sold in 1999 for a huge profit (he paid $600,000, and sold for $14 million).
The general pattern here is just as important as the details. Bush did no work in his business career that can clearly be called "excellent" or even "solid." The money he made is tangential to his efforts at best -- the oil companies lost a great deal of money during his tenure, and the Rangers cut a lot of corners -- which makes the cronyism that much more suspicious.

It's not just that one or two of Bush's deals look funky; every major business deal he has been involved with included wealthy supporters of his father, and many of those investors later received favorable treatment from either the federal government under Bush, Sr. or the current Texas administration of Junior.

Deal #1: The Oil Business: Rewarded for Losing Money
Like his dad, Junior struck out in Texas and founded an oil company, Arbusto Energy, Inc., with $20,000 of his own money. (Arbusto is the Spanish word for bush.) The company foundered in the early 1980s when oil prices dropped (and his dad was Vice President.)
The 50 investors, who were "mainly friends of my uncle" in Junior's own words, put in $4.7 million and lost most of it. Junior claims that investors "did pretty good," but Bush family friend Russell Reynolds told the Dallas Morning News: "The bottom line was there were problems, and it didn't work out very well. I think we got maybe 20 cents on the dollar."

As Arbusto neared collapse, Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation bought it in September 1984. Despite his poor track record, the owners made Bush, Jr. the president and gave him 13.6% of the parent company's stock.

Spectrum 7 was a small oil firm owned by two staunch Reagan/Bush Sr. supporters -- William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. These two were also owners of the Texas Rangers and allowed Bush Jr. to purchase a chunk of the team cheaply; he later sold it for over 24 times what he paid.

Within two years of purchasing Arbusto and making Bush Jr. president, Spectrum 7 was itself in trouble; it lost $400,000 in its last 6 months of operation. That ended in 1986, when Harken Energy Corporation bought Spectrum 7's 180-well operation.

Junior got $227,000 worth of Harken stock, and a lot more. He was named to the board of directors, made $80,000 to $100,000 a year well into the 1990s as a "consultant" to Harken, and was allowed to buy Harken stock at 40% below face value.

He also borrowed $180,375 from Harken at very low rates; the company's 1989 and 1990 SEC filings said it "forgave" $341,000 in loans to unspecified executives.

So what did Junior do for all this money? It's hard to say exactly, but things happened for Harken after Junior came on board:
it got a $25 million stock offering from an unusual bank with CIA ties,
it won a surprise exclusive drilling contract with Bahrain, a small Mideast country, and
an Arab member of its Board of Directors was invited to White House policy meetings with President George Bush and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.


Easy Money From Odd Sources
The firm's $25 million stock offering was underwritten by Stephens, Inc., an Arkansas bank whose head, Jackson Stephens, was on President Bush's "Team 100." (That was a group of 249 rich persons who gave at least $100,000 each to his presidential campaign committee). Stephens placed the offering with the London subsidiary of Union Bank of Switzerland, which (according to the Wall Street Journal) was not known as an investor in small American companies.

Union Bank did have other connections; it was a joint-venture partner with the notorious BCCI in a Geneva-based bank, and was involved in a scandal surrounding the Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA operation in Australia whose executives were advised by William Quasha, the father of Harken's chairman (Alan Quasha.) Union Bank was also involved in scandals surrounding Panamanian money laundering by BCCI, and Ferdinand Marcos' movement of 325 tons of gold out of the Phillipines.

That wasn't the only financing connection Junior brought; after the company won its Bahrain deal (see next item), the billionaire Bass brothers of Texas offered to underwrite the drilling operation. Robert Bass is also a member of Bush's Team 100, and he and his kin gave $226,000 to Bush Senior between 1988 and 1992.


The Bahrain Contract
In January 1990, Harken was chosen out of the blue by the small Mideast country Bahrain for an exclusive offshore oil drilling contract. They beat out Amoco, an experienced and major international conglomerate, despite having no offshore oil drilling experience at all. As of March 1995, the most recent report we could find, they had found no oil.

Junior has denied that he was involved in the deal, and even told the Wall Street Journal that he opposed it. But a company insider told Mother Jones Magazine "Like any member of the board, he was thrilled. His attitude was 'Holy #$%&, what a great deal!'"

If he did oppose it, he wasn't much of a consultant. Charles Strain, an energy company analyst in Houston, told Mother Jones: "Harken is not hard to understand -- it's easy. The company has only one real asset -- its Bahrain contract. If that field turns out to be dry, Harken's stock is worth, at the most, 25 cents a share. If they hit it big over there, the stock could be worth $30 to $40 dollars a share." As of December 1998, Harken Energy Corp. (HEC on Amex) is trading at $2.69 a share.


Access to the President For Bush's Foreign Business Partner
The most troubling thing that happened to Harken after it bought George Bush Junior in, was that one of its Board of Directors members was suddenly admitted to the highest levels of United States foreign policy meetings. These were not Clintonesque meet-and-greet fundraisers, but actual working policy meetings during a critical period.

After the Harken-Bahrain deal was signed, Talat Othman was added to a group of Arabs who met with George Bush and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft three times in 1990 -- once just two days after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Othman was the representative of Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, who purchased 10% of Harken stock and had several ties to the infamous BCCI bank. Bakhsh was a co-investor in Saudi Arabia with alleged BCCI front man Ghaith Pharaon. Bakhsh's banker, Khalid bin Mahfouz, was another BCCI figure and head of the largest bank in Saudi Arabia. Sheikh Kalifah, the prime minister of Bahrain, was a BCCI shareholder and played the key role in selecting Harken for the oil contract.

This is the crowd that gained entry to the President and the National Security Adviser of the United States after George Junior made his deal with Harken.


Deal #2: Selling Oil Stock Just Before Iraq Invaded
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.
A secret State Deparment memo in May of that year had warned that Saddam was out of control, and listed options for responding to him, including an oil ban that might affect US oil prices.

We can't be sure that the President or an aide mentioned these developments to his son, or that Harken's representative who was admitted to meetings with the President picked up something and reported back to Junior. But it is the simplest and most logical explanation. The Bushes acknowledge that George Senior and his sons consult on political strategy and other matters constantly.

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.

Deal #3: A Big Slice of the Texas Rangers for a Little Money (and a Big Profit)
The third unusually easy deal for George Bush Junior was his involvement in the Texas Rangers baseball team. In a nutshell, he was offered a piece of this valuable franchise for only $600,000, by supporters of his dad who also bailed out his failing oil company. He sold his stake for $14 million - while Texas governor -- to a Texas millionaire with lots of businesses regulated by his administration. "When all it is all said and done, I will have made more money than I ever dreamed I would make," Bush told the Forth Worth Star-Telegram.

Bush was allowed to buy 1.8% of the team for $600,000 of borrowed money, and was even made one of the two general managers. His qualifications for partial ownership? Several years working at failing oil companies, and his political connections through his father. It's hard to be sure, but we're guessing that latter was probably more important.

Junior tripled his investment, like the other owners, with the help of massive government intervention and subsidies. But his real wealth came from simply being given 10% of the team as a "bonus" for "putting together the investment team."
Even if he really had done that work, it's an absurd bonus ($12.2 million), but the fact is that he didn't add much. Cincinatti financier William DeWitt brought Bush in, not vice versa, shortly after George Bush Sr. was elected president. (DeWitt had also invested in Junior's oil companies.). The only investor Bush actually brought in was Roland Betts, a Yale fraternity brother, and that wasn't good enough.

Under Junior's management, the deal was about to fall apart until baseball commissioner Peter Uebberoth brought in another investment group led by Fort Worth Billionaire Richard Rainwater and Dallas investor "Rusty" Rose. Since the deal, both men have profited greatly from business with the Texas administration of George Bush, Jr. Rose personally invested $3.2 million and became the other general manager of the team. Under the team partnership agreement, Bush Junior couldn't take any "material actions" wihtout Rose's prior approval. There was also a method for removing Junior as a general partner, but no way to remove Rose. Yet Rose's "bonus" for his role in setting up the deal was less than half of Junior's.

What kind of owners would approve such a big payoff to Bush? In addition to Rose and Rainwater, men with business pending before Texas government, the owners included William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds, major contributors to President Bush who had also purchased Junior's failing oil company through their Spectrum 7 Energy company.

If this deal doesn't smell bad enough already, consider Bush's blatant hypocrisy. The main value of the team is its new stadium (ranked by Financial World as the most profitable in baseball) and 300 acres of vacant land the team owns between the stadium and 6 Flags of Texas, which is next door.


Putting Tax Money into Bush's Pocket
The hypocritical part is, the private owners of this very valuable land didn't want to sell. Bush and his partners gave them only a lowball offer, and when it was rejected they arranged for a new government agency (the Arlington Sports Facility Development Authority, or ASFDA) to condemn it for them.

The agency foreclosed the land and paid the owners a very low price, later judged by a jury to be only 1/6th of its actual value. The agency also floated bonds, guaranteed and repaid by taxpayers, to finance the purchase. This amounted to a $135 million subsidy for Bush and partners, compared with the $80 million they paid for the franchise. Since they sold the entire franchise for $250 million, it's easy to see whose money Bush and friends pocketed.

The next time Junior talks about tax cuts, remember this: Arlinton had to impose a new 1/2 cent sales tax just to pay for the subsidy Bush and his partners received.

To add insult to injury, Bush and his partners continue to stiff the taxpayers for $7.5 million they owe under the terms of the agreement. It held that the team would pay all expenses over $135 million. The original owners of just 13 of the acres sued the City of Arlington, saying that the ASFDA had not paid a fair price for the land. The jury awarded them $7.5 million, but even though the project exceeded the $135 million limit, the partners have refused to pay. Given their huge taxpayer subsidy and $170 million profits, it seems absurdly selfish.

George Bush, Jr. has said in campaign speeches "I will do everything I can to defend the power of private property and private property rights when I am the governor of this state." Apparently this deal was not covered by that statement, since he wasn't governor yet.

He claims that he "wasn't aware of the details" of the land condemnations, even though he was the team's managing general partner and has bragged about personally getting the stadium built. But he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in October 1990 that "The idea of making a land play, absolutely, to plunk the field down in the middle of a big piece of land, that's kind of always been the strategy."

And the key to their land play was always the strong arm of government. A memo from Arlington real estate broker Mike Reilly to Rangers President Tom Schieffer dated October 26, 1990 - the day before Bush's comment about the land play - said "In this particular situation our first offer should be our final offer ... If this fails, we will probably have to initiate condemnation proceedings after the bond election passes."

On the first day of the 1993 campaign, Bush said "The best way to allocate resources in our society is through the marketplace. Not through a governing elite." Not through a private sports team buying in the President's son cheap, and then getting the government to hand them extremely valuable land. "

As I said, more to come on wonderful, moral, upstanding, bright man our president is.

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . . I don't see anything in that article to further that opinion.

On the one side are the extremist who feel that anything mankind wants or needs should just be taken and damn the environment. On the other side is a bunch of extremists who feel that the environment should remain totally pristine without regards to mankind's needs. Both sides make so much noise that the quiet voice of reason is totally overwhelmed. Neither side wishes to give an inch, when indeed there may well be a way for both sides to get what they want.

Environmentalists want to forget about the nonsense they spouted before the Alaska pipeline was built. And anti-environmentalists want to ignore that the reason the pipeline wasn't an ecological disaster was that pressure put on by the environmentalists.

But, frankly, all that article does is reinforce my belief that both extremes are, as usual, idiots. As to the Shrub, that article does nothing one way or the other to change the low opinion I have of him.

--Pete

[Grumpy]

Bush's record in Texas as governor...which I am sure you have all seen....

"UPDATE: 3/8/00:


And now, a response to all the people in chatrooms, on BBSes, radio and TV who have been telling us about how great things are in Texas with George W. Bush in charge and that he should be the President.


Bush on Education

Texas is 36th in Teachers salaries. (halfway through first term)(7)
Texas is 38th in Teachers salaries. (beginning of 2nd term) (7)
Texas is LAST in Teachers salaries. plus benefits. (7)
Texas is 41st in average spending on a student kindergarten thru 12th grade. (14)
Texas is 46th in High School Completion Rate. (8)

Bush on Children and The Family

Texas has the 2nd Highest number of children living in poverty. (9)
Texas has the 2nd Highest number of children without health insurance. (9)
Texas has THE HIGHEST percentage of children without health insurance. (9)
Texas has THE HIGHEST percentage of poor working parents without insurance. (9)
Texas has the 2nd Highest percentage of population without health insurance. (9)
Texas has the 5th Highest Teen Birth Rate. (10)
Texas is 48th in Per capita funding for public health.(10)
Texas is 47th in Delivery of social services. (10)
Texas is 45th in number of Mothers receiving prenatal care. (15)
Teen smoking - down nationally, flat in Texas. (11)
Teen drug use - down nationally, up in Texas. (11)

In fact, Teen Drug Use in Texas has gone up substantially under Bush's time as governor.

Teen drug use is now 30 percent higher than under Ann Richards governorship. (11)


1994 1996 1998
Ever Used Any Illicit Drug
Ever Used Inhalants
Ever Used Marijuana
Ever Used Cocaine/Crack
Ever Used Hallucinogens
Ever Used Uppers
Ever Used Downers
Ever Used Alcohol
Ever Used Tobacco 27.8%
18.7%
25.3%
5.6%
5.9%
7.0%
4.5%
74.1%
54.5% 33.7%
19.8%
31.2%
7.1%
7.4%
7.9%
5.6%
73.3%
55.2% 36.1%
22.0%
34.5%
9.3%
7.3%
8.2%
6.6%
72.1%
54.7%


Bush on The Environment

Texas is FIRST in Pollution released by manufactuting plants. (12)
Texas is FIRST in Pollution by industrial plants in violation of Clean Air Act. (12)
Houston is FIRST in number of Smog Days. (12)
Texas is 49th in spending for the environment. (14)

Bush on Quality of Life

Texas is 48th in spending for parks and recreation. (13)
Texas is 48th in spending for the arts. (13)
Texas is 46th in number of Public libraries and branches. (14)
Texas is 48th on a list of "The Best States to Raise Children"(15)
(It was 29th when Bush was elected)

Texas is FIRST in number of poor counties. (14)
Texas is THIRD in Overall Hunger (adults and children) (14)
Texas is 48th in Literacy. (14)
Texas is FIRST in deaths as a result of DWI. (14)
Texas is FIRST in gun-related child injuries and deaths. (14)




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: 6/13/00:
We all know that crime has been going down all around the nation, right? Well, maybe not ALL around the nation. It turns out that Texas, despite having committed more executions than anyplace else in the Western Hemisphere... despite having concealed handgun laws that allow a weapon to be carried almost anyplace... despite having some of the most well armed citizens this side of the Michigan Militia... crime in Texas has gone up during Bush's term!

Click here to read the full FBI report (Must have Adobe Acrobat Reader) or check out a few choice picks from the bigger cities below.

Austin, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 39,446.
Austin, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 40,185.


Beaumont, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 9,355.
Beaumont, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 10,144.


Brownsville, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 7,783.
Brownsville, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 8,669.


Dallas, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 101,974.
Dallas, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 106,342.


El Paso, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 35,787.
El Paso, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 36,125.


Fort Worth, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 35,491.
Fort Worth, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 37,354.


Houston, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 127,817.
Houston, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 131,776.


Waco, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 9,535.
Waco, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 9,832.


Further evidence shows that this crime problem is limited to Texas and not a regional one.

Crime Index Trends By Geographic Region

Region

Total -7
Northeast -7
Midwest -8
South -4
West -10


Every region of the nation saw a reduction in crime to some extent. But note that the South, under which Texas is included in the FBI's crime reports (Click here for a listing of states by FBI region), had a much smaller drop than did the rest of the nation. That's because of the across-the-board crime upswings throughout the State of Texas.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Crime Totals for 1998: 24,569
Baton Rouge, Louisiana Crime Totals for 1999: 21,668


And, in case you were wondering, Arkansas is counted as a Southern state by the FBI as well:

Little Rock, Arkansas Crime Totals for 1998: 18,604
Little Rock, Arkansas Crime Totals for 1999: 17,499


Meanwhile, here's a Midwestern neighbor:

Wichita, Kansas Crime Totals for 1998: 23,303.
Wichita, Kansas Crime Totals for 1999: 20,977.


As falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls? Not where crime is concerned:

Wichita Falls, Texas Crime Totals for 1998: 5,891.
Wichita Falls, Texas Crime Totals for 1999: 5,973."

More to come as to why I am embaressed that this man is President....

[Grumpy]

Drug statistics are all screwy....

In each case the amount of drug use went up under George Jr., I attempted to go back and format this correctly but kept messing up....

I apologize for the mess...

[Grumpy]

Hi Pete,

My thoughts are: he is one vote away from getting approval to drill....and I would rather he didn't drill.

I think your take on extremists of any sort is accurate....in some sense. I also feel like we have entered a period of great social and political stagnation, significantly molded by TV, Media, politicians and an excessively lazy and uneducated population.

Questions need to be asked. Change is necessary. What questions? What change? I have ideas, but not much else.

[Chaerophon]

Wow. Goes to show you that merit has very little to do with today's political process. All that I ever read about up here was what a prominent up and comer he was in those days. Of course, then I heard him speak... and saw Will Farrel batting a ball of string around in imitation of him - that did it for me! :)

[Occhidiangela]

1. Harry Truman was a failed haberdahser, but a successful politician. Ulysses S Grant went bankrupt in private business, but as a general he was successful and he did get two terms in the WHite House. From your presentation, one could conclude that GWB appears not to have been the world's greatest business czar, so he found another field of endeavour. Seems to have done better there.

OBTW< my cousin was in oil, in Texas, during 1982-1987, with a small exploration firm. Let me tell you, an awful lot of people took a bath in the mid 80's in Texas petroleum: his company disappeared. He now works for BP in Houston, and sticks with natural gas. Not surprised that others also failed. Looks like GWB and partners were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they were not alone.

2. MLB profits from franchise sales were pretty impressive during the 80's and 90's, after a couple of very lucrative deals had been cut with Network TV, I think the biggest was with CBS. Owner income hit a sweet spot before baseball hit itself in the face a few times. Looks like GWB timed it right, as much by luck as anything else, I suppose.

3. "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."

Last I checked, SEC is not controlled by the President. However, I am not surprised at charges of insider info, given the timing. Not surprised at all, and I wonder at the truth of the matter.

4. For the record, I was an avid John McCain supporter, and was most disappointed that the Republicans did not choose him. However, he too has his share of dirty laundry, including being part of the Keating 5 some years back.

5. Thanks for spelling out your basis for disliking the current President. Your sources are, of course, objective. <_<

6. Texas crime statistics: interesing numbers, a longer spread would be a bit more enlightening, as GWB was governor for more than two years. :)
For perspective: take a real close look at when NAFTA hit. Look at where Texas is. I live here, in Texas. The numbers come as no news to me, I am sorry to say, and my insurance rates reflect it.

Thanks again.

[whyBish]

Hmmmm...

I'm going to lobby the U.N. to pass a resolution asking for a regime change in the U.S.A. ... I mean any dictatorship is bad right (especially one harbouring WMD)? ... even one where the people get to chose which dictator every four years... I think the U.S. citizens should be liberated by introducing a Survivors™/Popstars™ style government where one representative is voted off by the public every week, and you get a new batch every season.

[whyBish]

No points for guessing who will veto it.

[AtomicKitKat]

whyBish: LOL

Somehow Occhy, you missed the point. Grant went bankrupt, but became a good President. Bush NEVER went bankrupt! Anyone wanna do the math? ;)

[Occhidiangela]

Poor at business, succeeded in politics. That is the theme.

And to add to the interesting parallels, Truman was very much part of a particular "political machine" and IIRC, so was Grant, though I would have to go look up Grant's background again to get a better sense of that. GWB was very much the beneficiary of the "support" group that his father had built. One reason that Sen McCain ran into such internal opposition in the Republican party, his legendary 'abrasiveness' and stubborn streak aside. :o

PS: you just showed that you don't know much about the Presidency of U.S. Grant. :) I would hope that any President would not aim so low as to achieve Grant's record . . .

[The Luminaire]

To be honest, I dont understand this. I could really give a crap about the figures, becasue I agree with Occi. He may not have been the smartest buisness man, but he's doing fine in the oval office. And you've yet to disprove that. All you've done is spout figure after figure from a time long gone, having no effect whatsoever on the discussion.

Statistics about druge use, and underage drinking can be attributed to alot of things. Hell, if you really look at them, and understand what you're looking at, you'd notice that both went up sharply when grunge rock hit its peak in early 90-91'. Dont think the political climate had a whole lot to do with that. :D

It seems to me that you're rather hellbent on hating Mr. Bush, for any cause that suits your purpose.

I dont think he's the smartest, or the best at what he does, and Ill even concede that he's probly not the best president in the last 3-4 decades. That doesnt diminish his work as president in the last 2 years, and his right to, at the very least, our respect; for he is our president, one way or the other.

[Wee mad Arthur]

:blink:

[Occhidiangela]

If the President's methods are sound and consistent. What he appears to do is, do what he thinks is the right thing to do and press forward as best he can. He does not appear to be as poll hungry as some, but on the other hand, no President ignores the feedback mechanisms that are so prevalent. Put another way, he is doing what most Presidents do, he is growing into the job.

That said, I thought that an inauspicious beginning was thet first set of "tax cuts to solve all of our problems," the tax cut in 2001. I was of the camp that wanted to take the surplus and split it into two clumps.

Clump one, retire a little of the national debt. Shave off a bit of the annual debt service.

Clump two, invest in the infrastructure: highways, bridges, RAIL LINES, etc.

Guess my camp lost that one.

This latest "we need to cut taxes" risks undoing what 10 years of bipartisan effort succeeded in doing, for better or worse: getting the deficit spending under control and restoring a small measure of fiscal sense to federal spending.

Time will tell if the current courses of action will pay off.

While a man cut from somewhat different cloth, President Reagan typically chose a course of action and went for it. On some stuff he was right, on some stuff he was not.

Fear of being wrong has no place in a leadership position. The best method is to get it as right as you can and do it. Vascillation is antithetical to leadership.

[The Luminaire]

I agree entirely. At least on most of it.

As far as the tax cuts go, its and, and both. I think taxes are a little out of hand in some areas, but they're needed to, like you said, get the spending under control, and get this government back onthe right track.

For now, lets keep it the way it is. If things get under control, then we can talk about rewards.

Hey, new idea--Vote Occi for President, maybe Pete for a running mate! :D

[Occhidiangela]

Thanks, but really, I would not be interested in having the media dig for all the skeletons in my closet. I recently chose not to accept a small local position, non political, in the community for a similar reason. Need a few more years of settling in before I chance something that potentially disruptive to my family.

Pete, on the other hand, is not eligible, having not been born in this country, but just imagine: a strict Constitutionalist in the White House. What a concept!

[--Pete]

Hi,

but just imagine: a strict Constitutionalist in the White House. What a concept!

And what would the poor sap do? Reduce the power of the presidency to what the Constitution allows? Then he would be powerless to cut the federal government back to its proper bounds. Increase the power of the presidency to what he would need to curb the federal government and especially the federal bureaucracy? Then he would set a precedence to do even more damage to the Constitution than has been done so far.

Now, a *congress* dominated by strict Constitutionalists would have a chance if that weren't a chimera in the first place. ;)

--Pete

[Grumpy]

To be honest, I dont understand this.&nbsp; I could really give a crap about the figures, becasue I agree with Occi.&nbsp; He may not have been the smartest buisness man, but he's doing fine in the oval office.&nbsp; And you've yet to disprove that.&nbsp; All you've done is spout figure after figure from a time long gone, having no effect whatsoever on the discussion.

Statistics about druge use, and underage drinking can be attributed to alot of things.&nbsp; Hell, if you really look at them, and understand what you're looking at, you'd notice that both went up sharply when grunge rock hit its peak in early 90-91'.&nbsp; Dont think the political climate had a whole lot to do with that.&nbsp; :D

It seems to me that you're rather hellbent on hating Mr. Bush, for any cause that suits your purpose.

I dont think he's the smartest, or the best at what he does, and Ill even concede that he's probly not the best president in the last 3-4 decades.&nbsp; That doesnt diminish his work as president in the last 2 years, and his right to, at the very least, our respect; for he is our president, one way or the other.

I do not need to be "hell bent" on hating Mr. Bush, it comes naturally.

Has anyone noticed the religious overtomes of his speeches, useing words like "divine plan" or "god" or "evil doers" in his speeches?

In regards to the sarcastic "democracy" comments, when was the last time a president was elected when he got less votes than his opponent?

In what country can you imagine a scenario in which the deciding sector of votes (florida), is governed by one candidates brother (Jeb), that a HUGE debacle occurs over the count, and you are not suspicious?

His history in Texas is atrocious, nothing short of disgusting. If you would like to ignore that history, which I view as quite significant, than continue to do so. Someone please tell me in what way he did a good job governing that state??

He got in to college on his father's back. Barely passed. C average, and I would wage my paltry earnings that the professors were not gradeing him tough.

I would honestly prefer a minimum of 20 different posters in this forum as President over him.

I do not agree with Bush's policy decisions on taxes, big business, foreign policy, environmetal issues...and so much more.

The negative effects of this was will reverberate for hundreds of years to come, if not longer. We have aliented our friends and destroyed alliances. We will put in another puppet dictator. Not a democracy. If you look at the history of our goverment interventions, we do not support democracy, we support dictators. The fact remains that allies like Saudi Arabia, if democratic, simply would not be our allies. The people hate the US. Nearly everyone hates us more now.

Bush will continue to project his religious zeal upon the world. His friends will get rich. His suffering ego will be appeased.

"That doesnt diminish his work as president in the last 2 years, and his right to, at the very least, our respect; for he is our president, one way or the other."

...and then this, please tell me what he has done in the last 2 years?? And please tell me why I should respect someone I think is nothing short of barbarian. I do not respect his opinions, his intelligience, his policy decisions or his integity. He lies, he cheats, he steals, he invades.

I have never been more embaressed my our president. If you respect him, that's your opinion, but I would greatly appreciate to hear one person explain to me why I should respect this hollow shell of a man.

[kandrathe]

You are right <sic>, it is much better for the US to buy their oil from Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico, and the Middle East where they are sooo much more sensitive towards the environment. You come off as trying to be sooo sensitive towards the environment, yet really you just don't want it being done in your backyard. If you are *really* against drilling in ANWAR, then you should be promoting some alternatives to a] shutting down the world's economy, or b] burning most of the world's fossil fuels.

IMHO, oil, and coal are evil no matter where you get them from. At least if we take it from our own reserves we are not lining the pockets of Wahabi extremists...