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George Bush: "You're unemplyed because you're stupid."

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Cyrano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:35 AM
Original message
George Bush: "You're unemplyed because you're stupid."
Edited on Thu Oct-14-04 09:38 AM by Cyrano
When asked about unemployment and outsourcing last night, George Bush changed the subject to education.

The implication was, "You can't make a living because you're too stupid."

Now here's a guy who had access to one of the best educations in the world and yet, is dumber than spit.

Listen up, George. If it wasn't for your family's wealth and connections, you would require a ladder to climb up to a sewer where some kind soul might give you a cardboard box to live in.

Your simple-minded attitude toward the unemployed who are suffering under your policies is despicable. To put it bluntly, you are one uncaring, ignorant, arrogant prick.
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liontamer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:39 AM
Response to Original message
1. I wondered why he thought we were all illiterate
I can read, add, and subtract. What I lack is 100 million dollars from friends and family to invest in the international oil industry.
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LuminousX Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:39 AM
Response to Original message
2. My biggest problem with that...
Let's say all that it takes to get a job is an education and today some guy loses his job due to outsourcing... is he really supposed to pay for more education, waiting 2 years before he can reenter the workforce and start earning money again? What is he supposed to do in the meantime? Work two part-time jobs, go to school, and take care of his family? WTF is Bush thinking?

Not everyone has wealthy families they can rely on to 'cover them' while they figure out a new way to earn money.

And all of that is the case IF education translated into a job. It doesn't.
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Out the Parasites Donating Member (367 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:40 AM
Response to Reply #2
7. Plus...how many times can someone afford to stop everything and go back
to school????
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On the Road Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:39 AM
Response to Original message
3. I'm Sure He Scored Points with All The Skilled People
who are unemployed, underemployed, or afraid of being laid off. It just confirms how out of touch he is.
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Turanga Leela Donating Member (57 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 11:29 AM
Response to Reply #3
28. I felt this was deeply offensive to ALL educated middle-class people,
Employed or not. Everyone knows at least one person, probably a lot more, who either have multiple advanced degrees and can't find a job, or who diligently "retrained" for the promised land of IT back in the late 90's and...well, we all know how that one turned out, don't we?

The unmistakable subtext is that if we don't have a job, it's our own damn fault.

Hey, I admit to making the wrong choices in life...I wouldn't have dropped that $100,000 on an Ivy League degree if I had only known that the path to riches is through the local COMMUNITY COLLEGE.

:wtf:
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Out the Parasites Donating Member (367 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:39 AM
Response to Original message
4. Spot on! I loved it when Kerry said you can't measure this on the $$
I loved it when Kerry snapped back on the education remark and said to Bush something like: you can't measure this on the amount of money or percentages...You measure it on results.
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RevCheesehead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:46 AM
Response to Reply #4
14. I wrote it down:
Kerry: "You don't measure it by a percentage increase - you measure it by if you're getting the job done."

Brilliant statement!!!
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whistle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:39 AM
Response to Original message
5. The revolution is coming comrade and the likes of the Busheviks...
...and other neo-con/ring wing intellectuals are in complete terror about the outcome. Patience, right will beat might!
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RaleighNCDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 10:40 AM
Response to Reply #5
22. I'm sure you mean
'neo-con/right wing anti-intellectuals'

These people despise anyone who tries thinking outside their circular logic trap.
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whistle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 01:26 PM
Response to Reply #22
30. Right-wing; ring-wing; wing-ding, same difference...circular thinking
...is what characterizes their arguments.
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RaleighNCDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-15-04 09:46 AM
Response to Reply #30
39. Absolutely right.
(and I was meaning to emphasize the anti-intellectual rather than intellectual as posted, not trying to be proof-writing police. Hope you didn't take offense.)
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BuelahWitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:40 AM
Response to Original message
6. Bush has always said the poor were lazy and stupid
He flabbergasted one of his Harvard professors and his classmates by making spouting that crap in the '70s.
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Cyrano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:44 AM
Response to Reply #6
10. Oh, c'mon, classicfilmfan. You're just spouting sour grapes because
you weren't smart enough to be born rich.
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Kierkegaard Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:42 AM
Response to Original message
8. Yeah, but he has a job.
The education angle is pure horse apples. What difference does it make to have an education if there aren't any jobs?

I know a number of well educated people who have been unemployed for a considerable period because no one is hiring. I have a good education, and feel very fortunate to have stable work, but haven't had a raise in 3 years, my share of our health insurance plan just went up $127 a month, and my cost of living has gone up probably 20% since Smuggins took over the White House.

More education isn't likely to change my fortune. Changing the President just might...

20 more days.
20 more days.
20 more days.
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opihimoimoi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:45 AM
Response to Reply #8
12. THE DISTANT RUMBLE/..................................AVALANCH
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caledesi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:44 AM
Response to Original message
9. Yeah, I caught that and got the same impression. nt
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jilln Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:44 AM
Response to Original message
11. yeah i thought that was really arrogant and so out of touch...
IT professionals who lost your jobs... go to COMMUNITY COLLEGE!!! There are people with MS degrees out there who can't find decent work once their jobs get sent to India, and Bush wants them to go to community college???

It's particularly irritating knowing that these people are smarter than he is.
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quaoar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:46 AM
Response to Original message
13. In Bushworld, the unemployed are lazy whiners
In Bushworld, the unemployed are worthless couch potatoes who should just pick up the classified section and get one of the many jobs available every day thanks to our well-tuned economy.
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Philostopher Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:47 AM
Response to Original message
15. Will we all get 'legacy slots' at the best schools, too?
When someone in a foreign country starts doing our jobs for a tenth of what we made to do them?

"Born on third base, thinks he hit a home run" never had to fight for a goddamned thing in his life. I doubt he's ever gone hungry involuntarily, or ever had to wonder how many nights he was going to eat generic mac-and-cheese and cheap tunafish for dinner, or where his kids were going to find clothes to go to school, or how the hell he was supposed to feed himself while he scraped through schooling for his next job, even if retraining was provided.
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Minimus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:50 AM
Response to Original message
16. Here in NC alot of factory workers are without jobs - these are 50+ yr old
people who have done nothing but work in a textile factory. They do not want to go back to school, they want to take care of their family!

Most were just working hard and doing their time, waiting for retirement age. Now they have no job, no insurance, etc.

Oh yeah, education is a great plan for these fellow Americans, mr. bush!!!
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Cyrano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 10:11 AM
Response to Reply #16
20. How in the world can anyone in NC be thinking about voting for this turd?
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Minimus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 10:49 AM
Response to Reply #20
24. I know! It is crazy that some of the people bush hurt the most
still support him. "'cause he's a good christian man" or "he is macho, and doesn't take any crap from them terraists" :eyes:
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Cyrano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 11:13 AM
Response to Reply #24
27. What's really sad is that this kind of thinking just reenforces
the "albino on a porch with a banjo" image from "Deliverance."

I know the south has progressed beyond this stereotype, yet, there are obviously still too many people down there who refuse to move into the 20th century -- not to mention the 21st century.
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Minimus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 12:45 PM
Response to Reply #27
29. Well every time I see bush I think of the banjo boy from Deliverance
I swear he looks like him!
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RaleighNCDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 10:43 AM
Response to Reply #16
23. They should be re-training for all those great IT jobs
in India.
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footinmouth Donating Member (630 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 09:54 AM
Response to Original message
17. I was insulted by his remarks
I also felt he blamed joblessness on the unemployed person, not the situation. Go to community college and get rid of the trial lawyers and all will be well with the world. It took my well educated, degreed son a year to find anything other than temporary work. Now he's in his 3rd year of a poorly paid "teaching internship". It's not like the kid has sat on his butt waiting for people to hire him.
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beaconess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 10:05 AM
Response to Original message
18. John Edwards started calling Bush on this more than a year ago:
"They'll put you in a job retraining program. Retraining to do WHAT?"

Announcement speech, September 16, 2003
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noamnety Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 10:15 AM
Response to Reply #18
21. exactly.
I'm a semester away from my masters in computer studies, laid off 2 weeks ago.

I'm not so interested in being retrained for a manufacturing job (fry cook).
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Robert Oak Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 10:10 AM
Response to Original message
19. retraining for a masters a PhD an attorney?
Worse hit in the job expodus are engineers and computer scientists.

These are minimum BS degreed people, many with Masters and even PhD's.

The claim of retraining or a lack of education is a complete insult.

It's also ridiculous to tell someone at this educational level they need to go back to community college.

The reality is someone in India and China can do the work for 1/10th the price and nobody has yet to tackle a solution for this.

We need a policy to stop outsourcing.
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beaconess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 10:52 AM
Response to Reply #19
25. Only someone who doesn't know anyone who's out of work and
hasn't a clue what it means would say something that stupid.

Remember how Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush responded in the 1992 debates to the question of how the deficit affects them?

Q: How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives. And if it hasn't, how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what's ailing them?
. . .

BUSH: Well, I think the national debt affects everybody. Obviously it has a lot to do with interest rates. It has --

Q: She's saying you personally.

Q: On a personal basis, how has it affected you -- has it affected you personally?

BUSH: Well, I'm sure it has. I love my grandchildren and I want to think that ----

Q: How?

BUSH: I want to think that they're going to be able to afford an education. I think that that's an important part of being a parent. I -- if the question -- if you're -- maybe I get it wrong. Are you suggesting that if somebody has means that the national doesn't affect them?

Q: Well, what I'm saying ----

BUSH: I'm not sure I get it. Help me with the question and I'll try to answer it.

Q: Well, I've had friends that have been laid off from jobs. I know people who cannot afford to pay the mortgage on their homes; they're car payment. I have personal problems with the national debt. But how has it affected you? And if you have no experience in it, how can you help us if you don't know what we're feeling?

Q: I think she means more the recession, the economic problems today the country faces rather than the deficit.

BUSH: Well, you ought to -- you ought to be in the White House for a day and hear what I hear and see what I see and read the mail I read and touch the people that I touch from time to time. I was in the Lomax A.M.E. Church. It's a black church just outside of Washington, D.C. And I read in the -- in the bulletin about teen-age pregnancies, about the difficulty that families are having to meet ends -- to make ends meet. I talk to parents. I mean, you've got to care. Everybody cares if people aren't doing well. But I don't think -- I don't think it's fair to say, You haven't had cancer, therefore you don't know what it's like. I don't think it's fair to say, you know, whatever it is, that if you haven't been hit by it personally -- but everybody's affected by the debt because of the tremendous interest that goes into paying on that debt, everything's more expensive. Everything comes out of your pocket and my pocket.

So it's, it's sad, but I think in terms of the recession, of course you feel it when you're President of the United States. And that's why I'm trying to do something about it by stimulating the exports, investing more, better education system. Thank you. I'm glad to clarify it.

Q: Governor Clinton.

CLINTON: Tell me how it's affected you again. You know people who've lost their jobs and lost their homes.

Q: Well, yeah, uh-huh.

CLINTON: Well, I've been governor of a small state for 12 years. I'll tell you how it's affected me. Every year, Congress and the President sign laws that makes us -- make us do more things and gives us less money to do it with. I see people in my state, middle-class people, their taxes have gone up in Washington and their services have gone down while the wealthy have gotten tax cuts. I have seen what's happened in this last four years when in my state, when people lose their jobs, there's a good chance I'll know them by their names. When a factory closes I know the people who ran it. When the businesses go bankrupt, I know them. And I've been out here for 13 months meeting in meetings just like this ever since October with people like you all over America, people that have lost their jobs, lost their livelihood, lost their health insurance.

What I want you to understand is the national debt is not the only cause of that. It is because America has not invested in its people. It is because we have not grown. It is because we've had 12 years of trickle-down economics. We've gone from first to 12th in the world in wages. We've had four years were we've produced no private-sector jobs. Most people are working harder for less money than they were making 10 years ago. It is because we are in the grip of a failed economic theory. And this decision you're about to make better be about what kind of economic theory you want. Not just people saying I want to go fix it but what are we going to do. What I think we have to do is invest in American jobs, American education, control American health care costs and bring the American people together again.


Sounds like the apple doesn't fall far from the Bush. Junior is better at sounding folksy, but he doesn't have any more of a clue than his old man about how most Americans are affected by the economy.
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Nordic Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 11:10 AM
Response to Original message
26. Bush lost the election right there. It was a strange but great feeling
realizing that as those words were coming out of his mouth, he was guaranteeing his own failure.

Yes, Bush, everyone of those highly educated, highly skilled tech workers who are losing their jobs to India are losing them because their GRADE SCHOOL SUCKED.

That's what he said.

I could NOT believe that came out of his mouth. Even for him it was an astoundingly idiotic thing to say.
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grace0418 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 01:35 PM
Response to Reply #26
31. I agree, this is where the election was lost because
some of the only undecided voters I know are guys in the IT field. These are guys who were Republican but are not so sure these days. They have advanced degrees, are highly skilled and work long hours to get where they're at.

And Bush has the audacity to suggest that, if they get outsourced, not only is it primarily their fault but a couple of classes at community college are going to put them back on track?

Now they know that he is completely out of touch.

Bye bye Bushie!
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flobee1kenobi Donating Member (302 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 01:57 PM
Response to Reply #31
33. Recenty Graduated
with an Associates degree here-because my field of study was pretty much a dead end (IT) I didnt feel the need to continue towards a Bachelors degree.
more important to try to find suitable work that will pay off my student loan
THANKS GEORGE!
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Nordic Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 03:04 PM
Response to Reply #31
35. not only THAT but --
He is SOOOO out of touch with reality that he's saying the REASON that jobs are being outsourced is because Americans aren't doing well in GRADE SCHOOL!!!!

The guy is truly clueless!

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MADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 01:48 PM
Response to Original message
32. Oh, come on, people
...Don't you understand that you can put that Master's Degree or PhD away in a drawer, get yourself to a woodworking course at your local community college, and open up a successful small bidniz and become an interprenooor? That way you not only put food on yer family, but you got wood, too!

Paging Miz Scenario....Rosie Scenario!
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Cyrano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 03:56 PM
Response to Reply #32
36. Uhhh, okay. But will I learn how to make the pie higher?
Well, if cummuntee college can help me put food on my family and make the pie higher, bring it on.
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EndElectoral Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 01:58 PM
Response to Original message
34. No Child Left Behind is High School,.how's it help the 50 yr old jobless?
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texas1928 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 04:00 PM
Response to Original message
37. Hell that was his answer for the minimum wage hike
Your kids are stupid. that is why you can not get higher minimum wage. That is what his response to that question boils down to. The man did not impress me last night, and I do not appreciate him laughing at the fact that 46 million americans are without health insurance. I hope and pray, and do everything I can to make sure that SOB does not make it into office again.
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Cyrano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-14-04 04:23 PM
Response to Reply #37
38. The fact that almost half the people in this country are planning to vote
for this incredible imbecile is beyound comprehension. How in the world do the Republicans consistently get otherwise rational people to vote against their own interests.

If reselected, all that BushCo will bring us was summed up in a line that George Orwell wrote in "1984." "Picture a boot stepping on a human face, forever."
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