"Come on in, George."

Doug Freyburger wrote:

On folks calling Bush stupid, go right ahead. It's clear
he's one of the worst public speakers ever elected to the
office (apparently nearly as bad as George Washington).
If you make the mistake that poor public speaking equals
stupid, just try getting up in public and making a good
speech some time. Doing that causes you to underestimate
your opponent. He won re-election thanks to that sort of
underestimate. I'm neither pro-Bush nor anti-Bush but I
respect the way he parlays his weakness in public speaking
into his strength in getting folks to underestimate him.

That's "misunderestimate" him, to use his own phrase. One that I really
really like.

The thing that is so hard for people to get about Bush is that a lack
of curiosity doesn't make him a moron. It just makes him smart in his
own yard. Again, high IQ should not be mistaken with very smart. High
IQ is ability to handle complex concepts, it does not include a
predisposition to do so. That is one of the more frustrating things
about Bush from where I sit.

Hollywood

Pan Ohco wrote:
On Fri, 16 Sep 2005 01:38:39 -0400, Marengo wrote:


My guess is that with equal training on both sides, both Einstein and
Picasso could fly an F-102 better than George Bush could paint a picture or
expound on the mathematical proof of the theory of relativity.

I think I have to disagree with you on this. Einstein was all mental
talent, no coordination or physical talent.
And as to Picasso, I believe George Bush and anyone else could paint a
better picture. But that just my dislike of Picasso.
But I must admit that Picasso did have better PR the George Bush.

Probably you have never seen the realist portion of Picasso's work.

So Picasso is out doing his thing, right. All the establishment people
don't get it. They say he paints like that because he can't draw
realistically. So, he spends about a year or two cranking out stuff
that is realistic. His critics mostly shut up. So, he goes back to his
more abstract pieces. The point was that he actually could do the same
thing everyone else was doing, he just chose not to, seeing things
differently. His impressionist works aren't for everybody, but what art
is?

I suspect that if Einstein had set himself to it, he could have flown a
plane. Little known thing about Einstein. He was actually not that
brilliant a mathemetician. In fact, his wife was better with math than
he was. She helped him with the proofs for all of his important work.
If it takes IQ to fly a plane, I suspect he could have figured it out.
Concepts are a lot easier when you are smarter than the average
1-in-100 kind of smart person. Learning too. That he spent his time on
physics doesn't mean he couldn't have been an adequate pilot (I haven't
heard anything about Bush being a good pilot or a bad one, but I have
heard some about lousy attendance).

Picasso, I don't know, but I know he could draw it better than any of
the other candidates.

Bill DeWitt wrote:
Pan Ohco mentioned in passing :

But I must admit that Picasso did have better PR the George Bush.

True.

GWB is smarter than the average, seems to out-think the Democrats coming
and going, and is forthright... which is not true of many people who claim
to be smarter than him.

Here's what I believe. I think Bush is a pretty good manager. In that,
he is willing to admit what he doesn't know much about/isn't interested
in, and delegate that to others. I think this is a certain kind of
smart. I also think he has pretty good instincts vis-a-vis politics.

I don't buy the forthright. Maybe I'm biased, but I just don't see it.

Most of the insults about his intelligence can be boiled down to either
a bias against southern accents or a critisim of his dysphasia. Both
hallmarks of a liberal democrat, to pick on people because of their origins
or handicaps.

It's the lack of curiosity, the "I don't read the newspaper or books",
that bugs me. It's also the "I like Putin, so Russia's all good" and "I
don't like Chirac, so France is not good" type of thing too. Putin is
pretty bad (in the freedom, democracy, capitalist, western way) and
Chirac is pretty good (same way) but because of Bush's ascendancy of
foreign personality over foreign policy, out interests are very
confused in Europe. But Bush's predecessors of Both parties have dealt
with Russia/the USSR based on personality over policy since the 80's at
least.

-Hollywood, who also finds his verbal missteps sometimes amusing
(dictatorship and the OB-GYN quotes), sometimes depressing ("Bring them
on" and "Those WMD's have got to be somewhere!", and sometimes eerily
accurate ("misunderestimated", "Enemies...never stop thinking about
new ways to harm (us)... and neither do we").

Max Hollywood Harris mentioned in passing :


It's the lack of curiosity, the "I don't read the newspaper or books",
that bugs me.

Well, that is certainly the phrase that pays in the liberal press,
"Lack of couriosity". A quick search shows that it is an -extremely- popular
phrase, most often parroted by people who already "just know" that Bush is
both stupid and an evil mastermind. It is on the talking points and if
stated often enough, will seem to be true to those who read newspapers and
books.

Bush has advisors, summaries, CIA briefings, constant updates... he
doesn't need newspapers and I doubt he has time for recreational reading. I
know I don't.

I see it as the same reason I don't ride roller-coasters. I have fallen
out of trees twice, off a house once and down a flight of stairs. I don't
need vicarious vertigo. I don't find it pleasant.

Bush has for many years, lived the news. I doubt he needs to peruse Dan
Rather and The NYT to find out what they claim is going on.

We've already learned that TC's not trainable...

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:19:42 -0400, "Bob (this one)"
wrote:

(massive snippage)

It seemed to me that George W's father had the same lack of
presentation skills when he ran for reelection against Bill Clinton.
Debating seemed to be something he didn't care to do, and I'm
surprised his advisors let him get away with such poor, ineffectual
presentations. He easily could have effectively contrasted his
personal history against Clinton: When George H was 18 years old, he
enlisted in the US Navy and was it's youngest aviator at that time.
Compare that to Clinton's actions at the same age and couple it to
successful Gulf war and Clinton's name would be difficult to recall.

G.W.'s debates with Gore in 2000 showed the same reluctance to
confront criticism, and the real reason he won the election (despite
what's been said about the numbers) was that people did not trust
Gore, or the liberal wing of the democratic party after Clinton's
impeachment. Bush just isn't that good at debating.

Bush isn't a rocket scientist for sure, but he's also a hell of a long
way from being the idiot that the press loves to portray. That's what
gets my goat - there's almost no level playing field for him or his
administration except for Fox, while the truly clueless out there are
constantly sought after for current news analysis (except for Jocelyn
Elders). :-)

bmcky

Boston, MA

bmcky wrote:

|| G.W.'s debates with Gore in 2000 showed the same reluctance to
|| confront criticism, and the real reason he won the election (despite
|| what's been said about the numbers) was that people did not trust
|| Gore, or the liberal wing of the democratic party after Clinton's
|| impeachment.

Which is exactly why the pendulum will swing the other way in the next
Presidential election. After Bush's incompetence in so many different
areas, people no longer trust the conservative wing of the Republican party.

--
Peter
~~~~
THE BUSHES IN NEW ORLEANS: THE PICTURE FOX NEWS WOULDN'T LET US SEE:

http://users.thelink.net/marengo/bush

Bill DeWitt wrote:
Max Hollywood Harris mentioned in passing :


It's the lack of curiosity, the "I don't read the newspaper or books",
that bugs me.

Bush has for many years, lived the news. I doubt he needs to peruse Dan
Rather and The NYT to find out what they claim is going on.

Bill DeWitt,

It was noted prior to the 2000 election that Bush had very little
knowledge of, or interest in, foreign policy. In many sources.

I lived in Texas when he was first elected governor over Ann Richards
(doing undergrad at the Univ. of Texas). He very proudly, back then,
noted a lack of intellectual curiosity about the world around him. This
was back when he was living in the news as a failed business leader/oil
explorer/baseball owner, and was not really living in the news of
government, other than as the wayward sheep of the Bush Family.

From someone who posts pretty much from the talking posts, Mr. DeWitt,
I think you accusing me of talking from liberal talk points is a case
of the pot calling the white sheep black.

Hollwyood

Secret Squirrel wrote:
On 17/9/05 7:55 AM, in article
, "Max Hollywood
Harris" wrote:

BTW, which of his wives was the "better" mathematician? The first one who
was also a scientist, or the second who was also an Einstein, his cousin?

That'd be the first wife, Maria Mileva Einstein. Who is reported to
have worked many of his early equations with/for him.

http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife.../resources.htm

Did one of them knock together an atomic bomb in the kitchen, just to show
him how it was done?

Einstein didn't build the atomic bomb, ng historian. He did some of the
theoretical work behind it, but under the same logic, Bohr and Newton
should get even credit.

Newsgroup historians, a laugh a minute, - even funnier when they believe
what they are saying.

Yeah, you are. If only the mumbo jumbo weren't so unfunny.

-Hollywood


SS