Mr. President

GenuineRisk · #1 09-07-2006, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

I know Bush wasn't a great student but I'm not sure he was as bad as they made him sound in that article. The author of the article clearly had an agenda and I don't think he had anything close to Bush's complete transcripts. I think they only had his grades from his freshman year. When I heard Bush's GPA reported on the news several years ago, my recollection is that his grades weren't too bad. I remember they said he had a higher GPA than Gore.

The guy who was a really poor student was John McCain. He graduated at the bottom of his class in college. I believe he attended the Naval Acadmey at Annapolis.

Oh, Rupert, I think he was certainly an average student, not a bad one. I think the point the article was trying to make was not that he was stupid, but that average students don't get into Yale and Harvard Business School without connections, specifically, in the case of Yale, the legacy thing. The article's point was that one could say Bush, and other rich kids of rich Ivy League parents, benefit from a form of affirmative action (the legacy thing) which is why it's interesting to hear them come out against affirmative action as a policy.

(For the record, I don't think affirmative action based on race is the answer. I think that screws over a lot of poor white people who are getting stepped on by the wealthy as much as anybody. How about affirmative action based on income/assets?)

And yeah, even ten years out of college, who the f*ck cares where you went or what your grades were... doesn't matter by then...

Downthestretch55 · #2 09-07-2006, 05:49 PM

Genuine Risk,
If you get a chance, you might want to pick up James Lovelock's newly released book. It's a best seller in Britain and was released in the US last month.
Lovelock is the scientist that discovered the causes for problems in the ozone layer, provided data to Rachel Carson, and has views that are disrespected...until they come to be reality.
His take is that discussing "politics" doesn't matter much. Time is short, and irreversible.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0465...01#reader-link