General Discussion

Octafish

(55,745 posts) Wed Jun 17, 2015, 06:46 PM Jun 2015

''When they were young, Jeb was somebody for George to torture.'' -- cousin John Ellis

From the So THAT's What Happened Department:

Bush brothers have a complex relationship, marked by fierce rivalry, wounded feelings

By MARK Z. BARABAK
Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2015

EXCERPT...

From early on the brothers forged strikingly different paths.

George W. Bush followed his father’s route through New England prep school and Yale, where he was an unimpressive student. After graduating, he eagerly partook of bachelor life in Houston — “I was a spirited lad,” he later said with wry understatement — and spent more than a decade knocking about the oil business, with middling success. Bush was married with twin daughters when he finally quit drinking, after a 40th birthday bash that was a haze, save for the hangover.

John Ellis Bush, by contrast, breezed through the University of Texas in 2 ½ years, married at age 21 and moved to Florida, partly because of the social ostracism faced by his wife, Columba, a native of Mexico. He became a father at 23 — the couple has three children — and grew rich in Miami’s booming real estate business. In the early 1980s, he became active in state Republican politics, helped along by the Bush name; his father was then vice president under Ronald Reagan.

SNIP...

Jeb — the sober, dutiful son — had always been the one expected to assume the Bush political mantle. George W. was good for laughs, but not a lot more. It was a shock then, both inside the family and out, when Jeb lost his race and George W. won. The latter kept eager track of the competition with his sibling, checking the private Florida polling each morning to see where his race stood compared with his brother’s.

On election night, George W. was struck that his parents seemed more upset about Jeb’s loss than happy for his victory. “Why do you feel bad about Jeb?” he asked his father during a phone call that has become political lore. “Why don’t you feel good about me?”

CONTINUED...

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-bush-brothers-20150617-story.html#page=1

It is a thing of terrible beauty, reading between the lines to discern the coming pretzeldental narrative.

12 replies

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Highlight:

''When they were young, Jeb was somebody for George to torture.'' -- cousin John Ellis (Original Post) Octafish Jun 2015 OP

WE know W tortured animals when he was a kid, we found that out. randys1 Jun 2015 #1

Smirko'd put firecrackers in frogs to watch them blow up real good and fly. Octafish Jun 2015 #4

For those of you playing along at home, KamaAina Jun 2015 #2

The guy was working for Rupert Murdoch. Octafish Jun 2015 #5

What a snakepit of a family. hifiguy Jun 2015 #3

An apt analogy. Octafish Jun 2015 #6

I've heard from guys who went to Andover with him, some interesting stories cali Jun 2015 #7

Passing it forward, in Jebthro's own twisted way. Octafish Jun 2015 #8

And they've always billed him as "the smart one." nt City Lights Jun 2015 #10

Save your pity for someone who's worthy of it. Paladin Jun 2015 #11

So what country is Jeb gonna nuke to show his brother how he's a big man now? NightWatcher Jun 2015 #9

My God! what a twisted family tree! LongTomH Jun 2015 #12

randys1

(16,286 posts)

1. WE know W tortured animals when he was a kid, we found that out.

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Wed Jun 17, 2015, 06:47 PM

Jun 2015

We know W was AWOL and paid no price, at all.

We know W killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

4. Smirko'd put firecrackers in frogs to watch them blow up real good and fly.

Reply to randys1 (Reply #1)

Wed Jun 17, 2015, 06:58 PM

Jun 2015

All the murderous things he did to the innocent people of Iraq and Afghanistan and who knows where else almost become understandable in light of such a sick and twisted mind. The fact that most all of the government and press were cowed into going along with the insane idiot says where fascism is at in the USA. And the impending arrival of Jebthro as the GOP mantle bearer shows us he is just more damaged goods to help the robbers and traitors continue unabated.

KamaAina

(78,249 posts)

2. For those of you playing along at home,

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Wed Jun 17, 2015, 06:48 PM

Jun 2015

this is the John Ellis who called Florida for Dumbya that fateful (s)election night in 2000.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

5. The guy was working for Rupert Murdoch.

Reply to KamaAina (Reply #2)

Wed Jun 17, 2015, 07:06 PM

Jun 2015

MURDOCH THE BUSH FAMILY EMPLOYER: As Slate reports, Murdoch "put George W. Bush cousin John Ellis in charge of (Fox's) Election Night vote-counting operation: Ellis made Fox the first network to declare Bush the victor" even as the New Yorker reported that Ellis spent the evening discussing the election with George W. and Jeb Bush. After the election, Fox bragged that it attracted 6.8 million viewers on Election Night, meaning Ellis was in a key position to tilt the election for President Bush. (Source: Slate, 11/22/00; New Yorker, 11/20/00)

SOURCE: "Who Is Rupert Murdoch?"

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/media/news/2004/07/16/933/who-is-rupert-murdoch/

hifiguy

(33,688 posts)

3. What a snakepit of a family.

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Wed Jun 17, 2015, 06:55 PM

Jun 2015

America's Borgias.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

6. An apt analogy.

Reply to hifiguy (Reply #3)

Wed Jun 17, 2015, 07:14 PM

Jun 2015

The Borgias used privilege and position, as well as money and political power, to maintain control of the Empire.

Going by reputation, these guys Bush are no less evil. Going by the numbers murdered and trillions stolen, these guys are in a league of their own. Not even Ian Fleming dared dream such crooks would be able to subvert and control the government of the USA. And We the People today have yet to recover from Pruneface, Poppy and Tricky Dick's madministrations

George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

SNIP...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

[font color="green"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.

Gee, there must be some reason why Ronald Reagan packed a .38 even in the White House.

cali

(114,904 posts)

7. I've heard from guys who went to Andover with him, some interesting stories

Reply to Octafish (Original post)

Wed Jun 17, 2015, 07:14 PM

Jun 2015

ahout what a nasty little prick he was.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)

8. Passing it forward, in Jebthro's own twisted way.

Reply to cali (Reply #7)

Wed Jun 17, 2015, 07:35 PM

Jun 2015

Jeb Bush shaped by troubled Phillips Academy years

Possible presidential candidate had tumultuous four years at Andover school

By Chris Caesar @ChrisCaesar

Boston.com Staff | 01.30.15

In the fall of 1967, when a 14-year-old Texan named John Ellis Bush arrived on the bucolic campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, great expectations preceded him.

Jeb, as he was known, should have been an easy fit in that elite and ivied world. His much-accomplished father and his older brother had both gone to Andover; no one was surprised that Jeb had followed suit.

But this Bush almost ran aground in those first, formative prep school days. He bore little resemblance to his father, a star on many fronts at Andover, and might have been an even worse student than brother George. Classmates said he smoked a notable amount of pot — as many did — and sometimes bullied smaller students.

Resolutely apolitical despite his lineage, he refused to join the Progressive Andover Republicans club and often declined even to participate in informal bull sessions with classmates. In a tumultuous season in American life, he seemed to his peers strangely detached and indifferent.

“He was just in a bit of a different world,” said Phil Sylvester, who said he was a Bush roommate. While other students “were constantly arguing about politics and particularly Vietnam, he just wasn’t interested, he didn’t participate, he didn’t care.”

Meanwhile, his grades were so poor that he was in danger of being expelled, which would have been a huge embarrassment to his father, a member of Congress and of the school’s board of trustees.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/02/01/tumultuous-four-years-phillips-academy-helped-shape-jeb-bush/q6ccyHNOtP1n6kqDokMBfK/story.html#

I almost feel sorry for the guy.