There are a few little-regarded truths that have been buried under the relentlessly spewed pile of lies that were used to demonize George W. Bush and the Republican Congress from the day Al Gore failed to carry his own home State in the 2000 Election until… well… it’s still pretty much a leftist pastime.
The horror of “the last 8 years” has become it’s own self-perpetuating meme. The problem is that it’s a meme without meaning. Two of those eight years – now stretched to three out of the last nine – saw fiscal and regulatory policies determined by the Democrat Congressional majority, elected in 2006. Every economic indicator available shows that this is where America’s recent tribulations began.
The real horror – the years since the Democrat Congress rose to absolute power – hasn’t seen much discussion. It’s “all Bush’s fault”, as they say. But as the last ten years recede into the rear view mirror, we can see them in context. And 20/20 hindsight can often be quite revealing.
Read the whole thing, then pass it along to your friends.
h/t Cal2
So, when exactly does BamBam own the presidency?
Or is he just declared irresponsible for these four years, due to BDS?
The deficit for Feb would wipe out the 9 richest Americans complete net worth and take a chunk out of the 10th. Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/54/biz_06rich400_The-400-Richest-Americans_FinalWorth.html
http://www.globaleconomiccrisis.com/blog/archives/981
Kate, you forget that it was “Bush administration policies”* that got us in this mess in the first place.
* Denotes looney left wing talking point with no facts to back it up.
Barry “the Credit Card President” Obama is proving socialists don’t understand money, its value and the consequences of its misuse.
Actually, there are facts to back that up. This chart is deceiving. The bush presidency from 2000-2006 was an economic boom period which we now know is a bubble he encouraged the Fed to inflate. During this time, bush and the GOP ran up government spending and passed massive entitlements like Medicare Part D. The small deficits would have been surpluses under half-decent fiscal management. Jean Chretien and Paul Martin did a better job here in Canada. Obama’s spending has been worse, but no that different. The current deficit is largely due to a plunge in tax revenue and previous spending pretty much assured this deficit. Obama basically is Bush in terms of policy, he’s just more brazen. Bush made all this politically possible, as did all his supporters. Together, they have done far more damage than any Liberal ever could have. So yeah, I blame bush and the idiots who cheered him on.
Cytotoxic
Be a good lad and take your lithium…..
Adults are talking here….don’t interupt….
Yeah, the trend lines clearly show it was Bush’s fault.
Jeez, speaking of self-delusion.
Nice non-rebuttal there sasq. Hey, when ad hominem is all you’ve got, you better use it. Or better yet just concede.
Cytotoxic proves the point of the previous thread “Detroit, Not Dead Enough!”.
Bush was content to give Congress a free hand as long as they supported the wars. I think the graphics demonstrate this and are confirmed by the lack of presidential vetos, particularly during his last two years. Bush was no (fiscal) conservative just as Obama is no “moderate” socialist. Good article.
I believe that George W. Bush is a good man who loves his country and cares what happens to the American people. He is also a Christan Man. I liked him. He had a lot on his plate when he was President and he was demonized by media people – IMO, history will be kind to Dubya if the Communists in power right now, fail.
Dubya refused to sign the Kyotee AGW cult treaty, for that alone, he deserves our thanks and our respect.
I wonder if these graphs are based on the best projections of the cost of Obamacare,or the worst…. Oh right,Obamacare is free therefore would not contribute to any decline.
Posted by: Cytotoxic at April 5, 2010 1:40 PM
Together, they have done far more damage than any Liberal ever could have. So yeah, I blame bush and the idiots who cheered him on.
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George Bush didn’t approve the 1996 legislation that forced HUD to decree that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would assign at least 42% of their mortgages to people who would never have qualified otherwise. Bill Clinton did that (although Jimmy Carter had actually started the process back in the late 70’s) and he did it knowing that the Republicans would never dare vote against it. What politician in his right mind would invite his opponents to point accusing fingers at him and shriek, “Why do you HATE POOR PEOPLE???”
Cytotoxic
I don’t ever recall you making the same comments about Clinton. You remember right? The guy who had dot com on his side? The same guy who everyone thought was an economic genius. The same guy who also saw the bubble burst.
As for Chretian and Martin…you mean the clowns who raided the EI fund and slashed transfer payments to balance the books? The slashing that saw Canadians much coveted socialist style medicare take a beating?
“Dubya refused to sign the Kyotee AGW cult treaty, for that alone, he deserves our thanks and our respect.”
I’m pretty sure that if the Senate hasn’t ratified a treaty, the Pres. has nothing to sign. The only time Kyoto came up in the Senate (during Clinton), the vote was something like 97-0 against.
Bush doubled the national debt in the United states in his 8 years. Oboma is set to do it again including the bush years in just 4 years.
I blame them both.
Ah nothing like the smell of Bush apologist desperation in the afternoon. You know how Reagan ‘silenced’ the Carter admin law that forced banks to make bad loans? Yeah, Bush never did that. He also never seriously took on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Somehow I doubt he understood what they did because he was just so stupid. Clinton sucked but at least he paid off some debt and the gridlock between him and the GOP dominated Congress kept government growth sort-of in check. And he was genuinely pro-free trade unlike protectionist Bush (steel tariffs, lumber tariffs, etc).
@Ownshock: wow. You’re defending equalization aka government welfare. Clearly you must be the real defender of liberty here. /sarc
I have said it before, and I will say it again; history will be kinder to GW than the media ever was.
Obama on the other hand, has had the media kinder to him than history will be.
O’flashbacks.
Fear: It’s George’s fault.
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. – 8/13/2008
Michael J. Lewis – September 2009
…-
“The Art of Obama Worship
September 2009
Of all the images hurled forth by the last presidential election, none will live longer than Shepard Fairey’s poster of a red, white, and blue Barack Obama, gazing significantly into the distance, resting atop the single word Hope.”
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-art-of-obama-worship-15218
…-
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. – 8/13/2008:
“This is his [Obama’s] sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.”
http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections
To bad you can’t impeach the Congress.
If the democrats with the enabler Obama continue like this. America goes broke. You can bet we will go into the toilet as well. Our economies are so melded.
Godzilla is upon us.
George Bush overpaid for Manhattan Island, the Louisina Purchase and Alaska as well. Don’t forget those blunders.
Fred, socialists understand money this way: Money is a capitalist evil that must be destroyed. What better way than make it worthless?
That blame game is silly. There is a LOT of blame to go around. The USA have become a one-party state beholden to big money. Elections in US are barely more meaningful than ‘elections’ in the old USSR.
Refusal to face reality and deal with it is what got them into this mess. I place the high point of US history at 1969, the year they put men on the moon. After that, a chain of events started the downhill spiral. The trigger, I believe, if the peaking of oil production in 1971. That was followed by the abandonment of the gold standard, the oil embargo, the Vietnam debacle, and more insidiously, the beginning of a massive shutdown of industry, which continues to this day. This was in part a response to higher energy costs. Millions of people earning decent wages had to settle for McJobs. This fact jumps to our eyes in one of the charts posted the author of the article (Goy), the one showing how many people pay no income taxes. This just shows how many people work at lousy jobs! And yet he blames them.
The only president who had some prescience about reality was Jimmy Carter, and that earned him the universal scorn of just about anyone. Truth is a hard sell.
Under Reagan and his successors, the US economy turned to gimmicks. Instead of productive work, it resorted to various bubbles, financial ‘tools’ what were just glorified casino games and ponzi schemes, a bloated military, massive prison population (another form of welfare, really), frivolous lawsuits (why work when I can make a quick buck suing someone else), bloated ‘industries’ like healthcare (a great way to raise GDP without adding anything of value), etc.
Now all those chicken have come home to roost, and Bush and Obama found nothing better than try to keep the party going, even if it means bankrupting the country.
A courageous president, backed by house filled with men and women of stature, would have spoken truth to power and taken the appropriate steps. Among others:
1. End all entitlements. Let the States organize those and collect payroll taxes, as they see fit.
2. be serious about ‘energy independence’, which is really oil independence. This can be done by a combination of ‘drill, baby, drill’ AND strict conservation measures. In addition, it will create millions of badly needed, well-paid jobs for Americans.
3. End the policing of the world. The USA can’t afford to oversee an empire anymore. Close all foreign bases, bring the guys home, use them to truly defend the south border. With #2 accomplished, let those depending on Middle East oil deal with the mess. The only task I’d keep is the protection of commercial routes by the US Navy. And that means no more pussy-footing with Somali or other pirates. Kill them, sink their boats, move on.
The US already has a strong military right at home, 200 million armed citizens. NOBODY will ever invade them!
4. Close all departments that deal with issues that are local, like housing, education, etc. Let local governments look after local concerns.
Most of that WILL happen anyway. The question is how.
Bush was weak about dealing with the Democrats.
The result was the deficits that are now being snowballed by Democrats into financial collapse.
At this point they have created a poisoned pill that will choke whoever replaces them in the Congress or the Senate or the White House.
IMO … they are tantamount to traitors … even if they are just out of control stupid pigs.
There is a point where stupidity becomes reckless and willful. The USA is goung to need some real character to pull out of this and there is little sign that character exists any longer.
Quote: “Bush was weak about dealing with the Democrats.” –Really you just could’ve stopped after the first 3 words. He was weak with the big-government GOP, Iran, N Korea, Iraqi terrorists taking refuge in Fallujah, etc etc. And he loved big government. Could not get enough of it.
It’s okay because America will go bankrupt. No better way to end Leviathan than to defund it.
GreenNeck and Cytotoxic are largely correct. The current American fiscal state is a direct cause of decades of bad economic management; it cannot be attributed solely to this Democratic Congress, incompetent as it is. That anyone can write entire, lengthy blog posts about the implosion of the US fiscal state without discussing the enormous role the housing & financial bubbles played in it (and, on the flip side, speak glowingly about the Bush economic years without acknowledging how enormous said bubbles were in fuelling it) is just plain stupid.
America is going to have a sovereign debt crisis, probably during the Obama presidency, though it’s impossible to predict when or what will set it off. What happens to the world economy then is anybody’s guess because it’s truly uncharted territory.
Personally, I have a lot of faith in the average working American. As an analogy take professional atheletes, particularly football players, who literally “git er done”. They make the impossible possible.
When I watch some of these dedicated players, I feel no the Yanks are not gonna be down for long.
The free society they have, allows hard working individuals do the impossible. Impossible as defined by weak, cowards like the average Canadian who’s counts on pogey as a backup, and a lottery win as an economic strategy.
Anyone can beat whiners like that.When you are free.
I have said it before, and I will say it again; history will be kinder to GW than the media ever was.
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Absolutely. Iraq is well on its way to stability now, and once the corruption problem has faded somewhat things will be looking pretty good there. Within a decade or so the remaining mid-east dictatorships/theocracies will be in big trouble, I think…
Since Bush was President until January 20, 2009, the ’08 deficit ought to be counted against him also — so its bar should be red and not blue. That noted, the point of the chart is correct. Obama inherited a bad situation and made it much worse.
BTW, the Democrats have held majorities in the House and Senate since November 2006.
I went to the author’s site and asked him about the ’07 and ’08 bars. He replied:
The last budget (and, therefore, deficit) passed by the Republican majority in Congress was the one for 2007. The budgets (and deficits) after that were passed by the Democrat majority.
Wowza – one core problem – the main reason for the sharp increase in the deficit was not from just an increase in spending, but an extreme decrease in tax revenues due to the crashing economy combined with some automatic stablization mechanisms put in place since the great depression. So – difficult to just say – see! It’s the democrats who did it!
Personally, place me in the blame everybody camp, but the republicans clearly got the ball rolling.