George W. Bush finally says something truthful!

[Lobster Martini]

“No I can’t,” the president said, asked by a journalist if he could say something in French. “I can barely speak English.”

Can't really argue with that. This is a president who believes that elocution is what happens when you stick your finger into a wall socket. Three random quotes:

George W. Bush: "I think we agree, the past is over."

John F. Kennedy: "We set sail on this new sea because there is knowledge to be gained."

George W. Bush: "Chew before you swallow."

[Wetzelbill]

1. Is our children learning?

:)

[sarge43]

2. Comparing JFK to Bush is like

comparing the Hope Diamond to a lump of coal. The only similarity is both are carbon based.

[Ms. Toad]

3. Maybe . . .

But he's also saying it because it suits his political whims - he likes to be seen as the lovable bumbler. How else did he get to be the candidate most voters would like to have a beer with.

Although I certainly don't think he's the brightest bulb around, I also think some of it is an act to maintain his beer-drinking-buddy cheering squad.

[Sadie4629]

4. I agree that it's an act

He does have an MBA (from Harvard?), which they really don't just hand out like candy.

[rasputin1952]

6. If you toss enough cash around, you'll find "candy" comes easier.

:)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. But most people in the MBA program at Harvard

don't spend their time in class throwing spitballs, which one instructor said Bush did. I wouldn't be surprised if someone else wrote his papers-I'm just wondering how he passed any tests that were given. Perhaps the results were swept under the rug, like the results from sobriety and drug tests were.

[Sadie4629]

11. No kidding?!?

He did that in an MBA program?? Are you sure that wasn't as an undergrad--like maybe a freshman?

[sarge43]

14. He has the paperwork, if not the cred.

He got his bachelors in history{sic} at Yale; MBA from Harvah.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

15. Yes, I am sure

it was told in an interview with one of his instructors at Harvard. Bush went to Yale as an undergrad. The professor had an article in salon.com -- http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/16/tsurumi/index.html

...."I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."

The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in Tsurumi's macroeconomic policies and international business class in the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974. Tsurumi was a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from January 1972 to August 1976; today, he is a professor of international business at Baruch College in New York.

Trading as usual on his father's connections, Bush entered Harvard in 1973 for a two-year program. He'd just come off what George H.W. Bush had once called his eldest son's "nomadic years" -- partying, drifting from job to job, working on political campaigns in Florida and Alabama and, most famously, apparently not showing up for duty in the Alabama National Guard.

snip

Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy families, but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said. But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that had brought him to Harvard. "The other children of the rich and famous were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and standards of behavior," Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and spitting chewing tobacco into a cup. (I've heard the professor talk, and he also said Bush threw spitballs, but it isn't in this article)

Tsurumi goes on to say he showed pathological lying habits. When challenged on something everyone heard him say, he'd deny saying it. Bush also said the government shouldn't help poor people because poor people are lazy. If students challenged him in class, he would start a whispering campaign against them, using innuendo and lies. He felt he was entitled to go into TANG and was cunning and vengeful. Scary but insightful reading. (paraphrasing so I can stay within the 4 paragraph rule)

[Frank Cannon]

16. Morning Sedition used to have Tsurumi on quite a bit

He said that George Bush was easily the worst student he ever, EVER, had.

[DFW]

12. Maybe we should look more closely

Maybe the Harvard Business School hands out
"Master of Boorish Apeshit" to those who can't
put a sentence together, but whose families
were well-off enough to pay full tuition.

[Lil Missy]

5. "People and fish can coexist peacefully"

:eyes:

[peace frog]

7. "Families is where our nation finds hope,

where wings take dream"

[peace frog]

8. "I know how hard it is

for you to put food on your family."

[peace frog]

9. And in the 'truer words were never spoken' category

"One of my concerns is that the health care not be as good as it can possibly be."

-- George W. Bush, on military benefits, Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007

[indepat]

13. Junior's elegant and eloquent elocution are electrifying