I'm not complaining, so direct your comment at the one who was, Gabriel Malor.

Plenty of people have pulled themselves upward, despite Gabriel's whining about the unfairness of it all. Bill Clinton was born into modest circumstances, and he became a Rhodes Scholar and President of the United States.

This discussion is about the fact that George W. Bush, had he not been born into a rich and powerful family, did not have the innate ability to become anyone important.  Bush represents the "Peter Principle" on steroids.  Instead of being accountable, he was rescued from every one of his failures by an infusion of money from an anonymous source, so his upward trajectory far outstripped his meager abilities.

Don't you wish YOU could depend on being rescued from every failure?  What do you suppose the people who gave George free money whenever he needed it got for doing so?  Why did Tom Hicks give George $12M that he hadn't earned?  Why do you suppose the SEC failed to investigate the VP's son when he used insider information to dump his Harken stock?  Why do you suppose the person who took an $833,000 bath by buying George's stock didn't complain?

His lack of respect for the Constitution, and his statements on several occasions that he would prefer being a dictator, suggest strongly that were he in a situation where he could get away with what they do, he would be their equal.  He is doing his best to remove the Constitutional protections that keep us from becoming a dictatorship.

Repack - Gee. I guess no one else ever pulled themselves up by their boot straps.

Where has the President shown the aptitude, far less the interest, in pulling himself up by his bootstraps? No question he has little compunction trying to convince the working poor and lower middle class that working two or three jobs to tread water is an American value, never having done it, but that is par for the man.

And this little gem is almost pure in its ignorance. Perhaps the Spectator misses the point, as do so many who falsely label themselves conservative:

Do she and her ilk really believe this? Do they truly believe that Bush is worse than Muammar Qaddafi or Kim Jong-Il? Do they even bother to listen to themselves, much less apply rational analysis to their beliefs? Are they utterly ignorant of history? On what basis do they believe what they believe?

As if the argument that we are somehow better than the worst, is an argument at all. We expect these people (dictators of so many stripes) to abuse their populace by depriving them of rights, stripping the treasury for purposes of vanity, pit their military against foes, real or imagined, with no understanding of the consequences, and to posture to the world in defense of their insanity. It's a whole other issue when the President of the US does it. Someone should probably break it to the poor man that when you convict a whole region of the world for the actions of a few, legalize their indefinite imprisonment (complete with authorization of "vigorous interrogation"/torture, and debate over its efficacy), and attack opponents as supporters of terrorism or traitors, you lose your assumed moral standing and stack up fairly well with the likes of Amin, Hussein, and others.

Think about it. We attacked a country that didn't attack us, hell, couldn't attack us, and killed tens of thousands of innocent people. That by Bush's own statement. And, once the mistake is realized, but there is a government and Constitution, is willing to kill still more in the ephemeral hope that he can somehow stop the violence with more violence.

For lurkers, a strawman is the standard GOP debate strategy.  Donald Rumsfeld employs it full time, asking himself questions and then answering them rather than taking questions from the other side of the lectern. This debunked tactic is used by someone who does not have an argument, so he makes up a fictional statement from a fictional opponent, and then slams the cr@p out of an argument that he created for the sole purpose of refuting it.

The reason he does this, dear lurkers, is because he can't refute the REAL statements people here make.

Gabriel, you do not need to reinforce the fact that you do not have a case.  George W. Bush, born into YOUR family, would be the embarrassing uncle who failed at everything he tried and can't speak a coherent sentence.