re: religious and oil values before the presidency
he was born into oil so since the day he was born he had "contributors" in that area. And if you think he was always "religious" then look back at his drunk driving conviction, his lies to cover it up, his lies under oath, his avoiding vietnam buy pulling stringss, his funneling Texas state money into capaign funders, his felony drug use (+ hushed up arrest), his using state police to arrest peaceful demonstrators, his lawsuits to keep MCcain and Forbes off the New York primary ballot. Wake up, Amused One, this isn't a religious guy. Even you can believe that BS.
"he failed in the oil business" ? no his companies failed. huge difference read below. he profited.
" How does he make money at it?" hehe glad you bit. here's one example (many more are available but u can find them yourself.
Here are some examples of how Bush has profited from govt resources of his family
(1) Arbusto Oil founded with $20K of his own cash, while 50 investors -> "mainly friends of my uncle" In George W.s own words, put it 4.7 million and the lost most of it. Bush Jr said " the investors did pretty good" but then family friend Russel Reynolds "The bottle line was there were problems, and it didn't work out very well. I think we got maybe 20 cents on the dollar" As bush Jr's little company neared collapsed. Spectrum 7 energy corporation stepped in and made Bush Jr president (despite his obvious failure) and gave him 13.6% of the parents company stock. Sounds weird, look into Spectrum 7 and you'll know why (close ties to Regan/Bush Sr) the owners of spectrum 7 also let George Jr purchas a chunk of the Texas Rangers below market value, which later sold 24x what he sold it for. Finally Spectrum had problems and it was sold to Harken Energy corporation, where he was given 6 figures, over 200k of Harken stock, and was allowed to buy Harken stock 40% below face value (despite red inking both previous companies). he was allowed to borrow money from harken at very low rates, and was "forgiven" for most of these loans. So what did Bush Jr do to get all this cash while still mismanging two companies into the ground?
here are some thigs that happened for Harken after Bush came on board
(1) a surprise exlusive drilling contract with Bahrain
(2) members of it's board of directors were invtited to the daddy's white house and got to meet with Natl Security Advisor + pres of course
(3) 25 million stock offering from a very special bank with very special CIA ties.
You decide if these are coincidences. The payoff for his pro-oil policy will come after office, and he knows it.