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[<thomas AT tbeckett.com>]

It's East Coast vs. West Coast in this rock-em sock-em dustup.  Could
someone remind me what the original argument was about?

Let me restate the debate:

RESOLVED: George W. Bush is the least competent U.S. President since
Ulysses S. Grant.

Now, which side are each of you on?

TaB

P.S.  Apologies to U.S. Grant fans, I may be doing him a disservice here.
Grant was a drunkard, which we now recognize as the disease of alcoholism.
W. is a reformed alcoholic, so he has no excuse.

> on Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 02:08:17PM -0700, Eric Wolfram wrote:
>> At 03:21 PM 10/10/02 -0400, you wrote:
>> >on Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 10:04:56AM -0700, Eric Wolfram wrote:
>> >> Please indulge the thought for a moment. Follow the cash. George
>> the II, as I like to call him, is from one of the richest families
>> on the globe. They made their money by selling us the oil we use.
>> >
>> >Hm. That's funny - I always thought the Bush family was relatively
>> poor and nouveau riche. Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather, was
>> just some
>>
>> This IS funny. In what world is 3rd generation wealth nouveau?
>
> OK, the Merriam Webster definition says "a person newly rich" and gives
> as a synonym "parvenu", which says "one that has recently or suddenly
> risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet
> gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it", which I
> think qualifies for Dubya here. But it's not at all important to my
> argument, so congrats - your objection is accepted.
>
> George W. Bush is a parvenu, not nouveau riche. My bad.
>
>> In which society is a family that is worth over 300 million dollars
>> "relatively poor"?
>
> A society in which the most wealthy are worth far more than that? Read
> my post. Maybe if by "richest families on the globe" you mean "the ten
> million richest families on the globe" or some such, well, then, you're
> probably right.
>
> There's a guy who raises hogs down the road who is probably worth more
> than the entire Bush family combined.
>
> I'd love to see a reference for the $300M number, BTW, if you can find
> one. And if you could, please define "family" above so there aren't any
> more misunderstandings. I was referring to the progeny of GHW Bush, the
> one who became rich through his work in the oil industry, not to his
> sons, who are coddled and generally speaking, bumbling, members of his
> family, or to everyone related to them, which probably includes half of
> the country, according to this Salon article:
>
>  http://archive.salon.com/politics2000/feature/2000/03/31/bush/print.html
>
>> >George H. W. Bush didn't even enter the oil business until after WW
>> II, in the mid-fifties. According to Grolier, he made $2M between
>> 1954 and 1966.
>> >
>> > http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/aae/bios/41pbush.html
>>
>> Not only is that URL miss quoted here, the source itself is carefully
>> chosen to support an absurdly faulty conclusion that the Bush family
>> is "relatively poor".
>
> Hrm. The URL is not "miss quoted" [sic].
>
>  "Two years later [after graduating Yale in 1948] he and a partner
> established the Bush-Overby Development Company to trade oil leases and
> royalties, and in 1954 he became president of the Zapata Offshore
> Company, developing new oil-drilling equipment. Within a decade he had
> amassed about $2 million and began dabbling in local Republican
>  politics in Houston. Defeated when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964,
> Bush became the first REPUBLICAN to represent Houston in theU.S. HOUSE
> OF REPRESENTATIVES in 1966."
>
> I extrapolated from "in 1954", "within a decade", and "1966". I left off
> "about" preceding "$2M", which is a short form of "$2 million".
>
> What's your problem?
>
>> Do the world a favor, read this Article from Mother
>> Jones, and adjust that paradigm:
>>
>> http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html
>
> Um. So, where do you get the $300M figure again? And how does this
> article support your claims above?
>
>> As a bonus, that Motherjoens article should clear up any confusion
>> about how connected the Bush family is with the oil industry.
>
> Yes, I see. Neil Bush was a banker who made bad loans during the housing
> boom, and lost a pile of money exploring for oil. George made most of
> his money running a baseball team for some rich friends, after a crooked
> stock deal with Harken, where he may have traded (and probably did) on
> the basis of some knowledge of the affect an attack on Iraq would have
> on Harken, a full eight months before the Gulf War. Amazingly prescient.
> Jeb is apparently a wizard at making money from office real estate in
> underoccupied areas of urban Florida.
>
> Sounds to me like they are deeply connected with the oil industry. They
> have been losing millions of dollars by making bad investments in oil
> for decades. Where, exactly, does this clarify how they *made* their
> money through oil?
>
>> I think everyone agrees, that oil is essential to our American way of
>> life. Everything around us, was driven here with a truck, car or
>> plane. Our AC, our heating and our industry; it's all dependent on
>> oil.
>
> Actually, most electricity is generated by coal-fired plants.
>
>  http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/txt/mer7-2
>
>> >Following the money entails doing some basic research, no?
>>
>> Is it easy to hide behind research? Is it easy to tell lies with
>> research? Is this thread a joke? Is this some sort of research
>> competition?
>
> No, I was trying to engage in an exercise in backing up statements with
> proof of some sort. If your original post was a poem, I apologize for
> misunderstanding its intent.
>
>> Or are you really trying to get me to believe that The Bush family is
>> poor and American life doesn't depend on oil. LOL.
>
> OK, it's apparent you're not following along. I didn't say they were
> poor, I said "relatively poor", in reply to your silly claim about how
> the Bushes are - and I quote you directly here - "one of the richest
> families on the globe."
>
> They're not.
>
> Then, you claim, and again I quote you: "They made their money by
> selling us the oil we use".
>
> Which, as your own source shows, is patently absurd. George Pere made
> his money selling shares in oil futures and oil drilling equipment. His
> sons have been laughably unable to make any money at anything, and have
> only succeeded by having friends of the family buy their way into
> baseball teams and real estate scams.
>
> But hey, believe what you want to believe. I'm trying to find a
> reasonable basis for belief, myself.
>
> --
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> http://hesketh.com The average person needs trepanation like he needs a
> hole in the head. -ca
>
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