[jimtorr]

What I hear you saying on this thread is, "Something bad must have occured. After all, GW was well-connected."

This whole thing is a political hack-job, the old "where there's smoke there must be fire" casting of doubt. The only reason it has legs is that the people who control big-media are desperate for an issue to "get" GW. If they can't come up with something in this stock transaction real quick, like this week perhaps, I think that this too will backfire against the democraps.

[TomB]

If somebody wanted to do Bush a "favor", it seems that buying a publically traded block of stock at market value, which then doubled in price in a year is a very good and legitimate way of doing it. Since large quarterly losses, especially in the oil industry, are nothing out of the ordinary, I fail to see how this reflects poorly on the President at all.

But, since rd seems concerned this is a political issue, let's look at how the public will look at it:

"Bush sold stock to fund his purchase of a baseball team, the stock then make the buyer a 100% profit in the next year. No out of work single mothers, no retirees without a pension, no corporate execs taking the fifth in front of Congress.......

.........I'm sorry, what were we talking about?"

Legally, ethically, and politically, there is nothing here.

[LanaTurnerOverdrive]

This whole thing is a political hack-job, the old "where there's smoke there must be fire" casting of doubt. The only reason it has legs is that the people who control big-media are desperate for an issue to "get" GW. If they can't come up with something in this stock transaction real quick, like this week perhaps, I think that this too will backfire against the democraps.

Agreed. However GW has made matters much, much worse by changing his story on this one. First The SEC lost the paperfwork. Then the Harken lawers messed up the paperwork. Then last week he actually said "I haven't quite figured out what happened yet." I never doubted him before but I'm starting to wonder.