"You didn't get there on your own"

[Listening]

While I realize that the whole off-topic discussion regarding Medicare and Social Security is purely a deflection to take our minds of the fact that Barack Obama has no more idea how business works in this country than your average 2nd grader, what our resident lefties have failed to note is..... that all those programs are UNSUSTAINABLE in their current form.

So. If these entitlements and welfare programs were actually of any REAL importance to them, why the hell would they vote for a guy who has SAT ON HIS ASS for the last three and a half years without ONE competent idea about what we're gonna do about it?

There's no budget.
There's no reform of entitlements, or even any efforts at reform of entitlements.
They've given us a whole new LARGER entitlement that costs three times what they said it would.
And we're approaching 16 TRILLION in debt, which as I've pointed out repeatedly, will cost us a cool trillion in CASH annually by the end of the decade on our current path.

Face it libs, your guy is a disaster. And here we are, at the brink of another recession and at a time when consumer confidence is shot.... and what's he doing? He's out mind-fucking small business people.

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade??? When Bush was starting a 3 trillion dollar war of ideology in Iraq, there was not a fucking PEEP from you right wingers, just cheers and 'bring 'em on'... And where was this less government mantra? You right wingers LOVED BIG government and government intervention into people lives... the Patriot Act, trashing habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

And what was the concern in the Bush administration about debt and deficits? NONE...Bush's solution was to eliminate the voices of concern.

Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.

But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

"Cheney, at this moment, showed his hand. He said to O'Neill: 'You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.' … O'Neill was speechless."

"It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society," says O'Neill. "And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction."

There was a lot of angst from conservatives and it cost a lot of them their positions in political superstructures. Why do you think the Tea Party became such a big deal ? Because of Obama ? It was already revving up when Obama was elected.

Bush was a disaster and many in the GOP were critical of both he and the federal GOP congress for taking a pretty good opportunity and squandering it on a couple of stupid wars.

If you didn't read any of that from 2002 to 2008, you really do live in a filtered, selective world.

All you need do is Google "conservatives hate/dislike Bush".

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0712.greenberg.html

 

[Freewill]

While I realize that the whole off-topic discussion regarding Medicare and Social Security is purely a deflection to take our minds of the fact that Barack Obama has no more idea how business works in this country than your average 2nd grader, what our resident lefties have failed to note is..... that all those programs are UNSUSTAINABLE in their current form.

So. If these entitlements and welfare programs were actually of any REAL importance to them, why the hell would they vote for a guy who has SAT ON HIS ASS for the last three and a half years without ONE competent idea about what we're gonna do about it?

There's no budget.
There's no reform of entitlements, or even any efforts at reform of entitlements.
They've given us a whole new LARGER entitlement that costs three times what they said it would.
And we're approaching 16 TRILLION in debt, which as I've pointed out repeatedly, will cost us a cool trillion in CASH annually by the end of the decade on our current path.

Face it libs, your guy is a disaster. And here we are, at the brink of another recession and at a time when consumer confidence is shot.... and what's he doing? He's out mind-fucking small business people.

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade??? When Bush was starting a 3 trillion dollar war of ideology in Iraq, there was not a fucking PEEP from you right wingers, just cheers and 'bring 'em on'... And where was this less government mantra? You right wingers LOVED BIG government and government intervention into people lives... the Patriot Act, trashing habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

And what was the concern in the Bush administration about debt and deficits? NONE...Bush's solution was to eliminate the voices of concern.

Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.

But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

"Cheney, at this moment, showed his hand. He said to O'Neill: 'You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.' … O'Neill was speechless."

"It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society," says O'Neill. "And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction."

There was a lot of angst from conservatives and it cost a lot of them their positions in political superstructures. Why do you think the Tea Party became such a big deal ? Because of Obama ? It was already revving up when Obama was elected.

Bush was a disaster and many in the GOP were critical of both he and the federal GOP congress for taking a pretty good opportunity and squandering it on a couple of stupid wars.

If you didn't read any of that from 2002 to 2008, you really do live in a filtered, selective world.

All you need do is Google "conservatives hate/dislike Bush".

Why Conservatives Hate Bush - Greenberg

I never really liked Bush's agenda, way to liberal for my taste. Not sure why the left hated him so.

 

[Bfgrn]

While I realize that the whole off-topic discussion regarding Medicare and Social Security is purely a deflection to take our minds of the fact that Barack Obama has no more idea how business works in this country than your average 2nd grader, what our resident lefties have failed to note is..... that all those programs are UNSUSTAINABLE in their current form.

So. If these entitlements and welfare programs were actually of any REAL importance to them, why the hell would they vote for a guy who has SAT ON HIS ASS for the last three and a half years without ONE competent idea about what we're gonna do about it?

There's no budget.
There's no reform of entitlements, or even any efforts at reform of entitlements.
They've given us a whole new LARGER entitlement that costs three times what they said it would.
And we're approaching 16 TRILLION in debt, which as I've pointed out repeatedly, will cost us a cool trillion in CASH annually by the end of the decade on our current path.

Face it libs, your guy is a disaster. And here we are, at the brink of another recession and at a time when consumer confidence is shot.... and what's he doing? He's out mind-fucking small business people.

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade??? When Bush was starting a 3 trillion dollar war of ideology in Iraq, there was not a fucking PEEP from you right wingers, just cheers and 'bring 'em on'... And where was this less government mantra? You right wingers LOVED BIG government and government intervention into people lives... the Patriot Act, trashing habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

And what was the concern in the Bush administration about debt and deficits? NONE...Bush's solution was to eliminate the voices of concern.

Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.

But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

"Cheney, at this moment, showed his hand. He said to O'Neill: 'You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.' … O'Neill was speechless."

"It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society," says O'Neill. "And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction."

There was a lot of angst from conservatives and it cost a lot of them their positions in political superstructures. Why do you think the Tea Party became such a big deal ? Because of Obama ? It was already revving up when Obama was elected.

Bush was a disaster and many in the GOP were critical of both he and the federal GOP congress for taking a pretty good opportunity and squandering it on a couple of stupid wars.

If you didn't read any of that from 2002 to 2008, you really do live in a filtered, selective world.

All you need do is Google "conservatives hate/dislike Bush".

Why Conservatives Hate Bush - Greenberg

Thank you for the link!!! Next time, try READING it first...

Heartening as it is to hear the growing criticism of Bush from within the GOP ranks, the idea that he's veered from conservatism is hogwash. Bush is the most conservative president we've had since probably Warren G. Harding—and perhaps ever. He has governed, wherever possible, fully in step with the basic conservative principles that defined Ronald Reagan's presidency and have shaped the political right for the last two generations: opposition to New Deal-style social programs; a view of civil liberties as obstacles to dispensing justice; the pursuit of low taxes, especially on businesses and the wealthy; a pro-business stance on regulation; a hawkish, militaristic, nationalistic foreign policy; and a commitment to bringing religion, and specifically Christianity, back into public policy. "Mr. Bush has a philosophy. It is conservative," wrote Peggy Noonan in 2002. Ah, but times change. Last June she complained, "What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them."

It's certainly true that Bush hasn't delivered on every last item on the conservative wish list. But what president has—or ever could? What Bush's new critics on the right don't see, or won't see, is that to credibly accuse Bush of betraying "conservatism" requires constructing an ideal of conservatism that exists only in the world of theory, not the world of practical politics and democratic governance. It's an ideal that any president would fail to meet. In a democracy, governing means taking into account public opinion and making compromises. That means deviating at times from doctrinal purity.

Indeed, Bush's presidency, far from being a subversion of modern American conservatism, represents its fulfillment. For most of the president's tenure, many of the same folks who now brand him as an incompetent or an impostor happily backed his agenda. Republicans controlled the Senate and the House with iron discipline. They populated the federal court system, built a powerful media apparatus, and, for years after 9/11, benefited from a public climate of reflexive deference to the powers that be. From 2001 to 2007, the conservative movement had as free a hand as it could have hoped for in setting the agenda. The fruits of its efforts are Bush's policies.

So while conservatives may be disillusioned with Bush, they can't seriously claim it's over his policies. Another explanation seems more likely: When the Iraq War really turned sour in 2005 and the domestic catastrophes piled up, the appeal of being linked with Bush's legacy dimmed. Like mobsters turning state's evidence before they're sent up the river, former Bushies began to testify, throwing themselves on the mercy of the court of public opinion. The reason isn't that Bush is an imperfect conservative. It's that he's an unsuccessful one.

One clue that right-wingers might be acting a bit opportunistically in turning on Bush is the sloppy nature of so many of their arguments that he's left conservatism. In seeking to salvage a pure doctrine from the flotsam of the Bush years, for example, his onetime boosters will often say that he forsook a core conservative principle such as "tradition," "humility," or "small government"—or, more vapidly, "adherence to the Constitution," "the wisdom of the Founders," or "honesty in government." But general concepts like these are so elastic as to encompass any grounds for disowning a failed course of action—or so generic as to be useless as defining traits of conservatism. (Don't liberals preach adherence to the Constitution?) It may be fashionable now to deride Bush's Iraq policy as insufficiently humble, but on the eve of the invasion, when Bush flouted world opinion, how many conservatives warned that he was jettisoning principle? And, for that matter, how does the failure to prepare for and address Hurricane Katrina's damage stem from a dearth of humility? Even the oft-heard conceit that Bush has become a "big government" conservative—breaking from postwar conservatism's antistatist foundations—doesn't withstand scrutiny. After all, practically everyone on the right backed his tax cuts, corporate giveaways, and military and security expenditures, which, along with health care cuts, have busted the budget. On inspection, buzzwords like "big government" and "humility" appear to be supple rhetorical tools, used inconsistently and opportunistically, for polemical force or political positioning—not as the basis of serious intellectual critiques.

The same tendentiousness marks the invidious comparisons of Bush to various heroes from the Republican past. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel charged Bush with betraying Dwight Eisenhower's legacy. Texas Congressman and presidential aspirant Ron Paul has invoked the "true" conservatism of former Senator Robert Taft. For others, Barry Goldwater is the forsaken prophet. But here, once again, selective readings of history are at work. (Taftite isolationism, for example, hasn't been conservative doctrine since before the Eisenhower administration.) This abuse of history becomes clear from a comparison of Bush to the man beside whom virtually all conservatives claim he pales: Ronald Reagan.

For the last quarter century, Reagan's rhetoric and ideology have guided the conservative movement and the Republican Party, which were effectively fused during his presidency. The Reagan love-in—which includes a project led by GOP operative Grover Norquist to name something in every county in America after Reagan—has been gathering steam since his retirement. It reached an absurd peak at a Republican presidential debate earlier this year, when every candidate outdid the last to seize the late president's mantle.

What few of the GOP candidates would admit, though, is that the purest heir to Reaganism is George W. Bush. In 2003, Bill Keller of the New York Times even wrote a definitive 8,000-word article in the Sunday magazine called "Reagan's Son," which detailed striking similarities in the two men's personal styles, policies, and even staffing. Speaking to Keller, Norquist blessed the analogy. And since then the key traits that Keller identified as shared by Reagan and Bush—the "enthusiastic assumption of the role of solo superpower," "tax cuts with a supply-side bias," "a shift of responsibilities from government to the private sector, and from the federal government to the states"—have, if anything, intensified. Judging by those aspects of Reagan's record that his cheerleaders extol most ardently, Bush has actually proven more faithful to conservatism, not less, than his predecessor.

But Bush's new critics spare themselves the pain of finding fault with their hero through selective memory. They remember that Reagan was steadfast (most of the time) in his conservative rhetoric and ideology—just as Bush has been. They forget, however, that in practice Reagan veered from his official line as politics dictated or when, as invariably happened, different conservative ideals clashed.

 

[Listening]

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade??? When Bush was starting a 3 trillion dollar war of ideology in Iraq, there was not a fucking PEEP from you right wingers, just cheers and 'bring 'em on'... And where was this less government mantra? You right wingers LOVED BIG government and government intervention into people lives... the Patriot Act, trashing habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

And what was the concern in the Bush administration about debt and deficits? NONE...Bush's solution was to eliminate the voices of concern.

Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.

But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

"Cheney, at this moment, showed his hand. He said to O'Neill: 'You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.' … O'Neill was speechless."

"It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society," says O'Neill. "And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction."

There was a lot of angst from conservatives and it cost a lot of them their positions in political superstructures. Why do you think the Tea Party became such a big deal ? Because of Obama ? It was already revving up when Obama was elected.

Bush was a disaster and many in the GOP were critical of both he and the federal GOP congress for taking a pretty good opportunity and squandering it on a couple of stupid wars.

If you didn't read any of that from 2002 to 2008, you really do live in a filtered, selective world.

All you need do is Google "conservatives hate/dislike Bush".

Why Conservatives Hate Bush - Greenberg

Thank you for the link!!! Next time, try READING it first...

Heartening as it is to hear the growing criticism of Bush from within the GOP ranks, the idea that he's veered from conservatism is hogwash. Bush is the most conservative president we've had since probably Warren G. Harding—and perhaps ever. He has governed, wherever possible, fully in step with the basic conservative principles that defined Ronald Reagan's presidency and have shaped the political right for the last two generations: opposition to New Deal-style social programs; a view of civil liberties as obstacles to dispensing justice; the pursuit of low taxes, especially on businesses and the wealthy; a pro-business stance on regulation; a hawkish, militaristic, nationalistic foreign policy; and a commitment to bringing religion, and specifically Christianity, back into public policy. "Mr. Bush has a philosophy. It is conservative," wrote Peggy Noonan in 2002. Ah, but times change. Last June she complained, "What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them."

It's certainly true that Bush hasn't delivered on every last item on the conservative wish list. But what president has—or ever could? What Bush's new critics on the right don't see, or won't see, is that to credibly accuse Bush of betraying "conservatism" requires constructing an ideal of conservatism that exists only in the world of theory, not the world of practical politics and democratic governance. It's an ideal that any president would fail to meet. In a democracy, governing means taking into account public opinion and making compromises. That means deviating at times from doctrinal purity.

Indeed, Bush's presidency, far from being a subversion of modern American conservatism, represents its fulfillment. For most of the president's tenure, many of the same folks who now brand him as an incompetent or an impostor happily backed his agenda. Republicans controlled the Senate and the House with iron discipline. They populated the federal court system, built a powerful media apparatus, and, for years after 9/11, benefited from a public climate of reflexive deference to the powers that be. From 2001 to 2007, the conservative movement had as free a hand as it could have hoped for in setting the agenda. The fruits of its efforts are Bush's policies.

So while conservatives may be disillusioned with Bush, they can't seriously claim it's over his policies. Another explanation seems more likely: When the Iraq War really turned sour in 2005 and the domestic catastrophes piled up, the appeal of being linked with Bush's legacy dimmed. Like mobsters turning state's evidence before they're sent up the river, former Bushies began to testify, throwing themselves on the mercy of the court of public opinion. The reason isn't that Bush is an imperfect conservative. It's that he's an unsuccessful one.

One clue that right-wingers might be acting a bit opportunistically in turning on Bush is the sloppy nature of so many of their arguments that he's left conservatism. In seeking to salvage a pure doctrine from the flotsam of the Bush years, for example, his onetime boosters will often say that he forsook a core conservative principle such as "tradition," "humility," or "small government"—or, more vapidly, "adherence to the Constitution," "the wisdom of the Founders," or "honesty in government." But general concepts like these are so elastic as to encompass any grounds for disowning a failed course of action—or so generic as to be useless as defining traits of conservatism. (Don't liberals preach adherence to the Constitution?) It may be fashionable now to deride Bush's Iraq policy as insufficiently humble, but on the eve of the invasion, when Bush flouted world opinion, how many conservatives warned that he was jettisoning principle? And, for that matter, how does the failure to prepare for and address Hurricane Katrina's damage stem from a dearth of humility? Even the oft-heard conceit that Bush has become a "big government" conservative—breaking from postwar conservatism's antistatist foundations—doesn't withstand scrutiny. After all, practically everyone on the right backed his tax cuts, corporate giveaways, and military and security expenditures, which, along with health care cuts, have busted the budget. On inspection, buzzwords like "big government" and "humility" appear to be supple rhetorical tools, used inconsistently and opportunistically, for polemical force or political positioning—not as the basis of serious intellectual critiques.

The same tendentiousness marks the invidious comparisons of Bush to various heroes from the Republican past. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel charged Bush with betraying Dwight Eisenhower's legacy. Texas Congressman and presidential aspirant Ron Paul has invoked the "true" conservatism of former Senator Robert Taft. For others, Barry Goldwater is the forsaken prophet. But here, once again, selective readings of history are at work. (Taftite isolationism, for example, hasn't been conservative doctrine since before the Eisenhower administration.) This abuse of history becomes clear from a comparison of Bush to the man beside whom virtually all conservatives claim he pales: Ronald Reagan.

For the last quarter century, Reagan's rhetoric and ideology have guided the conservative movement and the Republican Party, which were effectively fused during his presidency. The Reagan love-in—which includes a project led by GOP operative Grover Norquist to name something in every county in America after Reagan—has been gathering steam since his retirement. It reached an absurd peak at a Republican presidential debate earlier this year, when every candidate outdid the last to seize the late president's mantle.

What few of the GOP candidates would admit, though, is that the purest heir to Reaganism is George W. Bush. In 2003, Bill Keller of the New York Times even wrote a definitive 8,000-word article in the Sunday magazine called "Reagan's Son," which detailed striking similarities in the two men's personal styles, policies, and even staffing. Speaking to Keller, Norquist blessed the analogy. And since then the key traits that Keller identified as shared by Reagan and Bush—the "enthusiastic assumption of the role of solo superpower," "tax cuts with a supply-side bias," "a shift of responsibilities from government to the private sector, and from the federal government to the states"—have, if anything, intensified. Judging by those aspects of Reagan's record that his cheerleaders extol most ardently, Bush has actually proven more faithful to conservatism, not less, than his predecessor.

But Bush's new critics spare themselves the pain of finding fault with their hero through selective memory. They remember that Reagan was steadfast (most of the time) in his conservative rhetoric and ideology—just as Bush has been. They forget, however, that in practice Reagan veered from his official line as politics dictated or when, as invariably happened, different conservative ideals clashed.

You are a stupid jackass.

The first part of the link is nothing more than a recitation of those who were critical of Bush.

You asked where was the angst.....this article had some of the best summation out there.

That the author didn't like it does not matter. He cited book and statements....those FACTS you seem to be so fond of.

Did my quote answer your question or didn't it ?

 

[Bfgrn]

There was a lot of angst from conservatives and it cost a lot of them their positions in political superstructures. Why do you think the Tea Party became such a big deal ? Because of Obama ? It was already revving up when Obama was elected.

Bush was a disaster and many in the GOP were critical of both he and the federal GOP congress for taking a pretty good opportunity and squandering it on a couple of stupid wars.

If you didn't read any of that from 2002 to 2008, you really do live in a filtered, selective world.

All you need do is Google "conservatives hate/dislike Bush".

Why Conservatives Hate Bush - Greenberg

Thank you for the link!!! Next time, try READING it first...

Heartening as it is to hear the growing criticism of Bush from within the GOP ranks, the idea that he's veered from conservatism is hogwash. Bush is the most conservative president we've had since probably Warren G. Harding—and perhaps ever. He has governed, wherever possible, fully in step with the basic conservative principles that defined Ronald Reagan's presidency and have shaped the political right for the last two generations: opposition to New Deal-style social programs; a view of civil liberties as obstacles to dispensing justice; the pursuit of low taxes, especially on businesses and the wealthy; a pro-business stance on regulation; a hawkish, militaristic, nationalistic foreign policy; and a commitment to bringing religion, and specifically Christianity, back into public policy. "Mr. Bush has a philosophy. It is conservative," wrote Peggy Noonan in 2002. Ah, but times change. Last June she complained, "What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them."

It's certainly true that Bush hasn't delivered on every last item on the conservative wish list. But what president has—or ever could? What Bush's new critics on the right don't see, or won't see, is that to credibly accuse Bush of betraying "conservatism" requires constructing an ideal of conservatism that exists only in the world of theory, not the world of practical politics and democratic governance. It's an ideal that any president would fail to meet. In a democracy, governing means taking into account public opinion and making compromises. That means deviating at times from doctrinal purity.

Indeed, Bush's presidency, far from being a subversion of modern American conservatism, represents its fulfillment. For most of the president's tenure, many of the same folks who now brand him as an incompetent or an impostor happily backed his agenda. Republicans controlled the Senate and the House with iron discipline. They populated the federal court system, built a powerful media apparatus, and, for years after 9/11, benefited from a public climate of reflexive deference to the powers that be. From 2001 to 2007, the conservative movement had as free a hand as it could have hoped for in setting the agenda. The fruits of its efforts are Bush's policies.

So while conservatives may be disillusioned with Bush, they can't seriously claim it's over his policies. Another explanation seems more likely: When the Iraq War really turned sour in 2005 and the domestic catastrophes piled up, the appeal of being linked with Bush's legacy dimmed. Like mobsters turning state's evidence before they're sent up the river, former Bushies began to testify, throwing themselves on the mercy of the court of public opinion. The reason isn't that Bush is an imperfect conservative. It's that he's an unsuccessful one.

One clue that right-wingers might be acting a bit opportunistically in turning on Bush is the sloppy nature of so many of their arguments that he's left conservatism. In seeking to salvage a pure doctrine from the flotsam of the Bush years, for example, his onetime boosters will often say that he forsook a core conservative principle such as "tradition," "humility," or "small government"—or, more vapidly, "adherence to the Constitution," "the wisdom of the Founders," or "honesty in government." But general concepts like these are so elastic as to encompass any grounds for disowning a failed course of action—or so generic as to be useless as defining traits of conservatism. (Don't liberals preach adherence to the Constitution?) It may be fashionable now to deride Bush's Iraq policy as insufficiently humble, but on the eve of the invasion, when Bush flouted world opinion, how many conservatives warned that he was jettisoning principle? And, for that matter, how does the failure to prepare for and address Hurricane Katrina's damage stem from a dearth of humility? Even the oft-heard conceit that Bush has become a "big government" conservative—breaking from postwar conservatism's antistatist foundations—doesn't withstand scrutiny. After all, practically everyone on the right backed his tax cuts, corporate giveaways, and military and security expenditures, which, along with health care cuts, have busted the budget. On inspection, buzzwords like "big government" and "humility" appear to be supple rhetorical tools, used inconsistently and opportunistically, for polemical force or political positioning—not as the basis of serious intellectual critiques.

The same tendentiousness marks the invidious comparisons of Bush to various heroes from the Republican past. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel charged Bush with betraying Dwight Eisenhower's legacy. Texas Congressman and presidential aspirant Ron Paul has invoked the "true" conservatism of former Senator Robert Taft. For others, Barry Goldwater is the forsaken prophet. But here, once again, selective readings of history are at work. (Taftite isolationism, for example, hasn't been conservative doctrine since before the Eisenhower administration.) This abuse of history becomes clear from a comparison of Bush to the man beside whom virtually all conservatives claim he pales: Ronald Reagan.

For the last quarter century, Reagan's rhetoric and ideology have guided the conservative movement and the Republican Party, which were effectively fused during his presidency. The Reagan love-in—which includes a project led by GOP operative Grover Norquist to name something in every county in America after Reagan—has been gathering steam since his retirement. It reached an absurd peak at a Republican presidential debate earlier this year, when every candidate outdid the last to seize the late president's mantle.

What few of the GOP candidates would admit, though, is that the purest heir to Reaganism is George W. Bush. In 2003, Bill Keller of the New York Times even wrote a definitive 8,000-word article in the Sunday magazine called "Reagan's Son," which detailed striking similarities in the two men's personal styles, policies, and even staffing. Speaking to Keller, Norquist blessed the analogy. And since then the key traits that Keller identified as shared by Reagan and Bush—the "enthusiastic assumption of the role of solo superpower," "tax cuts with a supply-side bias," "a shift of responsibilities from government to the private sector, and from the federal government to the states"—have, if anything, intensified. Judging by those aspects of Reagan's record that his cheerleaders extol most ardently, Bush has actually proven more faithful to conservatism, not less, than his predecessor.

But Bush's new critics spare themselves the pain of finding fault with their hero through selective memory. They remember that Reagan was steadfast (most of the time) in his conservative rhetoric and ideology—just as Bush has been. They forget, however, that in practice Reagan veered from his official line as politics dictated or when, as invariably happened, different conservative ideals clashed.

You are a stupid jackass.

The first part of the link is nothing more than a recitation of those who were critical of Bush.

You asked where was the angst.....this article had some of the best summation out there.

That the author didn't like it does not matter. He cited book and statements....those FACTS you seem to be so fond of.

Did my quote answer your question or didn't it ?

I bookmarked the article. It reinforces the facts I have presented numerous times on this board. Reagan was the worst and most destructive president in history. Bush is the manifestation of a failed ideology. The Reagan revolution is the American equivalent of the Bolshevik revolution. A radical dogma driven ideological movement that failed miserably.

AGAIN, Next time, try READING it first...

All the beginning of the article does is qualify what followed. That conservatives NOW insist Bush was not a conservative. The FACTS are. Bush was an ULTRA-conservative, Reagan on steroids. Bush didn't fail to be conservative. Conservatism FAILED!

The opening of the article YOU posted:

If I were a Bush administration insider, I'd be scrambling right now to get my book contract. No path leads more surely to critical acclaim these days than the White House confessional. What the insiders are trafficking in, however, isn't the usual gossip about infighting or turf wars but a matter of considerably greater importance: the president's alleged ideological apostasy. President Bush, a fleet of his former enthusiasts now insist, is no conservative.

No complaint against Bush is more popular on the right—or gets a freer pass in the mainstream media—than the notion that he somehow abandoned the philosophy that guides today's Republican Party. And the most recent insiders to turn on Bush for his impurities come from high stations. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who declined to contest Bush's disastrous tax cut plan back in 2001 when he might have derailed it, used his September memoir to blame Bush for failing to cut spending—a cardinal sin among conservatives. Weeks before, the law professor and Bush White House veteran Jack Goldsmith published a memoir disclosing his dismay with the administration's policies on torturing suspected terrorists, even though he could have denounced the president years ago. Before that, another ex-Bush aide, David Kuo of the euphemistically titled "faith-based" office, purported in his book to expose the hollowness of Bush's program for aiding religious institutions that do social work. Was he really expecting that the church-state wall would be demolished, not just eroded?

Greenspan, Goldsmith, and Kuo have, of course, merely joined a long train of right-wing officials, operatives, and journalists who once genuflected before Bush but are now charging him with abandoning the true path. Consider the comments of a few stars of the conservative firmament.

 

[Listening]

Thank you for the link!!! Next time, try READING it first...

Heartening as it is to hear the growing criticism of Bush from within the GOP ranks, the idea that he's veered from conservatism is hogwash. Bush is the most conservative president we've had since probably Warren G. Harding—and perhaps ever. He has governed, wherever possible, fully in step with the basic conservative principles that defined Ronald Reagan's presidency and have shaped the political right for the last two generations: opposition to New Deal-style social programs; a view of civil liberties as obstacles to dispensing justice; the pursuit of low taxes, especially on businesses and the wealthy; a pro-business stance on regulation; a hawkish, militaristic, nationalistic foreign policy; and a commitment to bringing religion, and specifically Christianity, back into public policy. "Mr. Bush has a philosophy. It is conservative," wrote Peggy Noonan in 2002. Ah, but times change. Last June she complained, "What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them."

It's certainly true that Bush hasn't delivered on every last item on the conservative wish list. But what president has—or ever could? What Bush's new critics on the right don't see, or won't see, is that to credibly accuse Bush of betraying "conservatism" requires constructing an ideal of conservatism that exists only in the world of theory, not the world of practical politics and democratic governance. It's an ideal that any president would fail to meet. In a democracy, governing means taking into account public opinion and making compromises. That means deviating at times from doctrinal purity.

Indeed, Bush's presidency, far from being a subversion of modern American conservatism, represents its fulfillment. For most of the president's tenure, many of the same folks who now brand him as an incompetent or an impostor happily backed his agenda. Republicans controlled the Senate and the House with iron discipline. They populated the federal court system, built a powerful media apparatus, and, for years after 9/11, benefited from a public climate of reflexive deference to the powers that be. From 2001 to 2007, the conservative movement had as free a hand as it could have hoped for in setting the agenda. The fruits of its efforts are Bush's policies.

So while conservatives may be disillusioned with Bush, they can't seriously claim it's over his policies. Another explanation seems more likely: When the Iraq War really turned sour in 2005 and the domestic catastrophes piled up, the appeal of being linked with Bush's legacy dimmed. Like mobsters turning state's evidence before they're sent up the river, former Bushies began to testify, throwing themselves on the mercy of the court of public opinion. The reason isn't that Bush is an imperfect conservative. It's that he's an unsuccessful one.

One clue that right-wingers might be acting a bit opportunistically in turning on Bush is the sloppy nature of so many of their arguments that he's left conservatism. In seeking to salvage a pure doctrine from the flotsam of the Bush years, for example, his onetime boosters will often say that he forsook a core conservative principle such as "tradition," "humility," or "small government"—or, more vapidly, "adherence to the Constitution," "the wisdom of the Founders," or "honesty in government." But general concepts like these are so elastic as to encompass any grounds for disowning a failed course of action—or so generic as to be useless as defining traits of conservatism. (Don't liberals preach adherence to the Constitution?) It may be fashionable now to deride Bush's Iraq policy as insufficiently humble, but on the eve of the invasion, when Bush flouted world opinion, how many conservatives warned that he was jettisoning principle? And, for that matter, how does the failure to prepare for and address Hurricane Katrina's damage stem from a dearth of humility? Even the oft-heard conceit that Bush has become a "big government" conservative—breaking from postwar conservatism's antistatist foundations—doesn't withstand scrutiny. After all, practically everyone on the right backed his tax cuts, corporate giveaways, and military and security expenditures, which, along with health care cuts, have busted the budget. On inspection, buzzwords like "big government" and "humility" appear to be supple rhetorical tools, used inconsistently and opportunistically, for polemical force or political positioning—not as the basis of serious intellectual critiques.

The same tendentiousness marks the invidious comparisons of Bush to various heroes from the Republican past. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel charged Bush with betraying Dwight Eisenhower's legacy. Texas Congressman and presidential aspirant Ron Paul has invoked the "true" conservatism of former Senator Robert Taft. For others, Barry Goldwater is the forsaken prophet. But here, once again, selective readings of history are at work. (Taftite isolationism, for example, hasn't been conservative doctrine since before the Eisenhower administration.) This abuse of history becomes clear from a comparison of Bush to the man beside whom virtually all conservatives claim he pales: Ronald Reagan.

For the last quarter century, Reagan's rhetoric and ideology have guided the conservative movement and the Republican Party, which were effectively fused during his presidency. The Reagan love-in—which includes a project led by GOP operative Grover Norquist to name something in every county in America after Reagan—has been gathering steam since his retirement. It reached an absurd peak at a Republican presidential debate earlier this year, when every candidate outdid the last to seize the late president's mantle.

What few of the GOP candidates would admit, though, is that the purest heir to Reaganism is George W. Bush. In 2003, Bill Keller of the New York Times even wrote a definitive 8,000-word article in the Sunday magazine called "Reagan's Son," which detailed striking similarities in the two men's personal styles, policies, and even staffing. Speaking to Keller, Norquist blessed the analogy. And since then the key traits that Keller identified as shared by Reagan and Bush—the "enthusiastic assumption of the role of solo superpower," "tax cuts with a supply-side bias," "a shift of responsibilities from government to the private sector, and from the federal government to the states"—have, if anything, intensified. Judging by those aspects of Reagan's record that his cheerleaders extol most ardently, Bush has actually proven more faithful to conservatism, not less, than his predecessor.

But Bush's new critics spare themselves the pain of finding fault with their hero through selective memory. They remember that Reagan was steadfast (most of the time) in his conservative rhetoric and ideology—just as Bush has been. They forget, however, that in practice Reagan veered from his official line as politics dictated or when, as invariably happened, different conservative ideals clashed.

You are a stupid jackass.

The first part of the link is nothing more than a recitation of those who were critical of Bush.

You asked where was the angst.....this article had some of the best summation out there.

That the author didn't like it does not matter. He cited book and statements....those FACTS you seem to be so fond of.

Did my quote answer your question or didn't it ?

I bookmarked the article. It reinforces the facts I have presented numerous times on this board. Reagan was the worst and most destructive president in history. Bush is the manifestation of a failed ideology. The Reagan revolution is the American equivalent of the Bolshevik revolution. A radical dogma driven ideological movement that failed miserably.

AGAIN, Next time, try READING it first...

All the beginning of the article does is qualify what followed. That conservatives NOW insist Bush was not a conservative. The FACTS are. Bush was an ULTRA-conservative, Reagan on steroids. Bush didn't fail to be conservative. Conservatism FAILED!

The opening of the article YOU posted:

If I were a Bush administration insider, I'd be scrambling right now to get my book contract. No path leads more surely to critical acclaim these days than the White House confessional. What the insiders are trafficking in, however, isn't the usual gossip about infighting or turf wars but a matter of considerably greater importance: the president's alleged ideological apostasy. President Bush, a fleet of his former enthusiasts now insist, is no conservative.

No complaint against Bush is more popular on the right—or gets a freer pass in the mainstream media—than the notion that he somehow abandoned the philosophy that guides today's Republican Party. And the most recent insiders to turn on Bush for his impurities come from high stations. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who declined to contest Bush's disastrous tax cut plan back in 2001 when he might have derailed it, used his September memoir to blame Bush for failing to cut spending—a cardinal sin among conservatives. Weeks before, the law professor and Bush White House veteran Jack Goldsmith published a memoir disclosing his dismay with the administration's policies on torturing suspected terrorists, even though he could have denounced the president years ago. Before that, another ex-Bush aide, David Kuo of the euphemistically titled "faith-based" office, purported in his book to expose the hollowness of Bush's program for aiding religious institutions that do social work. Was he really expecting that the church-state wall would be demolished, not just eroded?

Greenspan, Goldsmith, and Kuo have, of course, merely joined a long train of right-wing officials, operatives, and journalists who once genuflected before Bush but are now charging him with abandoning the true path. Consider the comments of a few stars of the conservative firmament.

Did my quote answer your question or didn't it ?

 

[Foxfyre]

Where did our debt come from? When did massive debt become part of the American economy?

Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!

And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade??? When Bush was starting a 3 trillion dollar war of ideology in Iraq, there was not a fucking PEEP from you right wingers, just cheers and 'bring 'em on'... And where was this less government mantra? You right wingers LOVED BIG government and government intervention into people lives... the Patriot Act, trashing habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act.

And what was the concern in the Bush administration about debt and deficits? NONE...Bush's solution was to eliminate the voices of concern.

Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.

But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

"Cheney, at this moment, showed his hand. He said to O'Neill: 'You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.' … O'Neill was speechless."

"It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society," says O'Neill. "And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction."

There was a lot of angst from conservatives and it cost a lot of them their positions in political superstructures. Why do you think the Tea Party became such a big deal ? Because of Obama ? It was already revving up when Obama was elected.

Bush was a disaster and many in the GOP were critical of both he and the federal GOP congress for taking a pretty good opportunity and squandering it on a couple of stupid wars.

If you didn't read any of that from 2002 to 2008, you really do live in a filtered, selective world.

All you need do is Google "conservatives hate/dislike Bush".

Why Conservatives Hate Bush - Greenberg

I never really liked Bush's agenda, way to liberal for my taste. Not sure why the left hated him so.

They hated him because he won and Gore didn't. It is as simple as that. They didn't hate him because he governed differently than he campaigned. He didn't. Just as they weren't paying attention or didn't care about the red flags re Obama, we ignored those re President Bush too. He was pretty true to what he said he wanted to do, so we got a sensible tax policy that did some very good things and we got a decent guy who respected the office and respected us.

But we also got NCLB, the Medicare Prescription bill, pushes for amnesty for illegals, unacceptable government meddling via spending, and an energy policy only a liberal could love, and that was what was getting the attention of those of us who would become part of the Tea Party movement. Then it was Obama's unconscionable signing of the bloated, pork laden, budget busting apportionment bill, the stimulus package,and Obamacare that provided the final impetus for a full blown Tea Party movement.

Bush had no control over 9/11 or Katrina, major scale disasters few Presidents have to deal with. So how he handled those, for better or worse, is not the fault of the policies he brought into the office.

Conversely President Obama is a very different man and has governed almost 180 from how he campaigned. And his policies and what he has signed from Congress thus far has only increased the misery index, has included power many of us see is dangerous and inappropriate, and has done nothing to address the core problems that government could have addressed.

His war on private enterprise and the productive in this country is only the tip of the iceberg there.

 

[Bfgrn]

You are a stupid jackass.

The first part of the link is nothing more than a recitation of those who were critical of Bush.

You asked where was the angst.....this article had some of the best summation out there.

That the author didn't like it does not matter. He cited book and statements....those FACTS you seem to be so fond of.

Did my quote answer your question or didn't it ?

I bookmarked the article. It reinforces the facts I have presented numerous times on this board. Reagan was the worst and most destructive president in history. Bush is the manifestation of a failed ideology. The Reagan revolution is the American equivalent of the Bolshevik revolution. A radical dogma driven ideological movement that failed miserably.

AGAIN, Next time, try READING it first...

All the beginning of the article does is qualify what followed. That conservatives NOW insist Bush was not a conservative. The FACTS are. Bush was an ULTRA-conservative, Reagan on steroids. Bush didn't fail to be conservative. Conservatism FAILED!

The opening of the article YOU posted:

If I were a Bush administration insider, I'd be scrambling right now to get my book contract. No path leads more surely to critical acclaim these days than the White House confessional. What the insiders are trafficking in, however, isn't the usual gossip about infighting or turf wars but a matter of considerably greater importance: the president's alleged ideological apostasy. President Bush, a fleet of his former enthusiasts now insist, is no conservative.

No complaint against Bush is more popular on the right—or gets a freer pass in the mainstream media—than the notion that he somehow abandoned the philosophy that guides today's Republican Party. And the most recent insiders to turn on Bush for his impurities come from high stations. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who declined to contest Bush's disastrous tax cut plan back in 2001 when he might have derailed it, used his September memoir to blame Bush for failing to cut spending—a cardinal sin among conservatives. Weeks before, the law professor and Bush White House veteran Jack Goldsmith published a memoir disclosing his dismay with the administration's policies on torturing suspected terrorists, even though he could have denounced the president years ago. Before that, another ex-Bush aide, David Kuo of the euphemistically titled "faith-based" office, purported in his book to expose the hollowness of Bush's program for aiding religious institutions that do social work. Was he really expecting that the church-state wall would be demolished, not just eroded?

Greenspan, Goldsmith, and Kuo have, of course, merely joined a long train of right-wing officials, operatives, and journalists who once genuflected before Bush but are now charging him with abandoning the true path. Consider the comments of a few stars of the conservative firmament.

Did my quote answer your question or didn't it ?

You didn't even READ the question, now did you?

"And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade???"

 

[Chris]

The stock market has doubled since the stimulus.
4.3 million private sector jobs have been created since 2009.
GDP has been growing since 2009.
Americans net worth is up $10 trillion dollars since 2009.
Auto sales are up. Retail sales are up. Home sales are up. Unemployment is down.
Bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive.
Obama has done a very good job.

 

[Listening]

I bookmarked the article. It reinforces the facts I have presented numerous times on this board. Reagan was the worst and most destructive president in history. Bush is the manifestation of a failed ideology. The Reagan revolution is the American equivalent of the Bolshevik revolution. A radical dogma driven ideological movement that failed miserably.

AGAIN, Next time, try READING it first...

All the beginning of the article does is qualify what followed. That conservatives NOW insist Bush was not a conservative. The FACTS are. Bush was an ULTRA-conservative, Reagan on steroids. Bush didn't fail to be conservative. Conservatism FAILED!

The opening of the article YOU posted:

If I were a Bush administration insider, I'd be scrambling right now to get my book contract. No path leads more surely to critical acclaim these days than the White House confessional. What the insiders are trafficking in, however, isn't the usual gossip about infighting or turf wars but a matter of considerably greater importance: the president's alleged ideological apostasy. President Bush, a fleet of his former enthusiasts now insist, is no conservative.

No complaint against Bush is more popular on the right—or gets a freer pass in the mainstream media—than the notion that he somehow abandoned the philosophy that guides today's Republican Party. And the most recent insiders to turn on Bush for his impurities come from high stations. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who declined to contest Bush's disastrous tax cut plan back in 2001 when he might have derailed it, used his September memoir to blame Bush for failing to cut spending—a cardinal sin among conservatives. Weeks before, the law professor and Bush White House veteran Jack Goldsmith published a memoir disclosing his dismay with the administration's policies on torturing suspected terrorists, even though he could have denounced the president years ago. Before that, another ex-Bush aide, David Kuo of the euphemistically titled "faith-based" office, purported in his book to expose the hollowness of Bush's program for aiding religious institutions that do social work. Was he really expecting that the church-state wall would be demolished, not just eroded?

Greenspan, Goldsmith, and Kuo have, of course, merely joined a long train of right-wing officials, operatives, and journalists who once genuflected before Bush but are now charging him with abandoning the true path. Consider the comments of a few stars of the conservative firmament.

Did my quote answer your question or didn't it ?

You didn't even READ the question, now did you?

"And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade???"

Well, no...I guess not. I only posted a link that tried to answer a question I didn't read.

A simple yes or no will do.

 

[Uncensored2008]

a. bigot or racist?
b. born that way or beaten up?

a. fuck off
b. go fuck yourself

 

[Listening]

The stock market has doubled since the stimulus.
4.3 million private sector jobs have been created since 2009.
GDP has been growing since 2009.
Americans net worth is up $10 trillion dollars since 2009.
Auto sales are up. Retail sales are up. Home sales are up. Unemployment is down.
Bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive.
Obama has done a very good job.

Your spam list is old jerkwad.

Some of this is no longer true.

Your last statement was never anything but a wet dream.

Obama is a one-termer and you are still a spamming asshole.

 

[HUGGY]

The stock market has doubled since the stimulus.
4.3 million private sector jobs have been created since 2009.
GDP has been growing since 2009.
Americans net worth is up $10 trillion dollars since 2009.
Auto sales are up. Retail sales are up. Home sales are up. Unemployment is down.
Bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive.
Obama has done a very good job.

One would think that the so called "conservatives" would be out on thier lawns doing cartwheels with the dramatic down sizing of public sector jobs since Obama took office.

Isn't THAT thier main mantra.. SMALLER GOVERNMENT????

If all the teachers, firemen, cops and city, county state and federal workers jobs cut thruout government in the last few years where immediately put back to work unemplyment would be down around 6 %.

The whack right got just exactly what they were crying for. Smaller government.

People like Stefunny just can't be pleased.


Molly's Middle America: Private & Government Jobs Gained & Lost Under Obama (May 2012 update)

Sunday, June 3, 2012Private & Government Jobs Gained & Lost Under Obama (May 2012 update)
How Many Jobs Were Lost or Created Under Obama? (Latest June 2012 update)


June 2012 Summary and Links

ADP Jobs Report for June HERE!


All Jobs Obama Created Were Gov't Jobs?
Don't Put Money on This...Read below..


How many jobs (total, private, and government) have been lost or gained since Obama was inaugurated?
4,317,000 TOTAL jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) were LOST in from the time Obama took office until the "trough" of the recession in early 2010. That's a decrease of 3.2%.
3,765,000 jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) were CREATED from the "trough" of the recession until now, May 2012. That's an increase of 2.91%.
In total, 552,000 jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) were LOST from the time Obama took office until now, May 2012. That's a decrease of 0.41%. *
We have experienced 20 months WITHOUT job losses since September 2010. We have ADDED 3,124,000 jobs during those 19 months.
We now have 133,009,000 TOTAL non-farm jobs.


* These are all net figures, meaning that they represent the total number of jobs at the end of a reporting period. All losses have been subtracted from all gains and vice verse.
* Though, as of April 2012, we still have fewer jobs (in adjusted numbers) than when President Obama took office, jobs are being added at a faster clip under Obama than under George Bush at the same time in his presidency. At this point in Bush's presidency (April 2004), there were still 1,415,000 fewer jobs than when he was inaugurated in January 2001 (compared to 572,000 fewer for Obama). The number of jobs didn't eclipse the number when Bush was first inaugurated until February 2005, in Bush's second term. (These numbers will be updated for May in the coming days.)


All jobs numbers & reports (June 2012 & and all 2011 & 2012 Updates) indexed HERE!!


How many PRIVATE sector jobs have been lost or gained since Obama was inaugurated?
4,213,000 PRIVATE-sector jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) were LOST from the time Obama took office until the "trough" of the recession in early 2010. That's a decrease of 3.8%.
4,268,000 PRIVATE-sector jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) were GAINED OR CREATED from the "trough" of the recession until now, May 2012. That's an increase of 4.00%.
In total, 55,000 private sector jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) have been GAINED from the time Obama took office until now, May 2012. That's a net increase of 0.05%. *
We have experienced 27 months of positive private-sector job GROWTH from February 2010 until May 2012. We have added 4,268,000 private-sector jobs during those 26 months.
We now have 111,040,000 PRIVATE sector non-farm jobs.
*Though, as of April 2012, we still have fewer private-sector jobs (in adjusted numbers) than when President Obama took office, jobs are being added at a faster clip under Obama than under George Bush at the same time in his presidency. At this point in Bush's presidency (April 2004), there were still 2,194,000 fewer private sector jobs than when he was inaugurated in January 2001 (compared to 35,000 MORE for Obama). The number of private-sector jobs didn't eclipse the number when Bush was first inaugurated until June 2005, in Bush's second term. (This number will be updated for May in the next few days.)


How many GOVERNMENT jobs have been lost or gained since Obama was inaugurated?
102,000 GOVERNMENT jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) were LOST from the time Obama took office until the "trough" of the recession in early 2010. That's a decrease of .47% (about half of a percent).
Another 505,000 GOVERNMENT jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) were LOST from the "trough" of the recession until now, May 2012. That's a decrease of 2.25%.
In total, 607,000 government jobs (in seasonally adjusted numbers) were LOST from the time Obama took office until now, May 2012. That's a decrease of 2.69%.
We have experienced decreases in the number of government jobs in 21 out of the last 24 months, starting in June 2010, when the layoff of 2010 Census workers began.
We now have 21,969,000 GOVERNMENT non-farm jobs, not including people in the military. (Civilians employed by the U.S. and working for the military are counted.)
(Note: Current numbers taken from the April Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Report. Historical numbers taken from various archived Employment Situation reports as indexed HERE. Specifics will be provided upon request; please email me or leave a comment.)

 

[Bfgrn]

Did my quote answer your question or didn't it ?

You didn't even READ the question, now did you?

"And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade???"

Well, no...I guess not. I only posted a link that tried to answer a question I didn't read.

A simple yes or no will do.

You just answered it for me, thanks.

 

[Listening]

You didn't even READ the question, now did you?

"And where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade???"

Well, no...I guess not. I only posted a link that tried to answer a question I didn't read.

A simple yes or no will do.

You just answered it for me, thanks.

Isn't it great that for someone who claims to be so clear with the facts and so on message that you are anything but that.

My apologies for taking you at your word.

 

[clevergirl]

We all knew in our hearts anything this revolutionary couldn't have been built by a government bureaucracy.


Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?

Contrary to legend, it wasn't the federal government, and the Internet had nothing to do with maintaining communications during a war.

A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet."

Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet? - WSJ.com

 

[Bfgrn]

Well, no...I guess not. I only posted a link that tried to answer a question I didn't read.

A simple yes or no will do.

You just answered it for me, thanks.

Isn't it great that for someone who claims to be so clear with the facts and so on message that you are anything but that.

My apologies for taking you at your word.

Do I have to explain it to you? REALLY???

I asked 'where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade???"

You provided angst and concern about debt from conservatives ONLY AFTER Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade were thrown out, and a Democrat won the White House.

The author of the article YOU posted sums it up perfectly:

The criticisms of Bush now coming from various quarters on the right have it precisely backward. They fault him for compromising too much when his failures have resulted from his refusal to compromise more.

So are conservatives unhappy with Bush because he let down their causes? No. They're miffed that Bush, in pursuing those very causes, alienated two-thirds of the voting public. Starting with Katrina in the fall of 2005, and proceeding through the worsening civil strife in Iraq, the revelations of the wiretapping and U.S. attorney scandals, and growing discontent with domestic problems like health care, Americans lost faith in Bush's agenda. Various right-wingers are now trying to salvage conservatism not simply to maintain their own reputations but because they worry that, having soured on Bush, voters may soon sour on the creed of conservatism itself. That would be a turn of events for the right so damaging that not even another Ronald Reagan could repair it.

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

[Jarhead]

You just answered it for me, thanks.

Isn't it great that for someone who claims to be so clear with the facts and so on message that you are anything but that.

My apologies for taking you at your word.

Do I have to explain it to you? REALLY???

I asked 'where was all this angst and concern about debt from conservatives when Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade???"

You provided angst and concern about debt from conservatives ONLY AFTER Bush and Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for almost a decade were thrown out, and a Democrat won the White House.

The author of the article YOU posted sums it up perfectly:

The criticisms of Bush now coming from various quarters on the right have it precisely backward. They fault him for compromising too much when his failures have resulted from his refusal to compromise more.

So are conservatives unhappy with Bush because he let down their causes? No. They're miffed that Bush, in pursuing those very causes, alienated two-thirds of the voting public. Starting with Katrina in the fall of 2005, and proceeding through the worsening civil strife in Iraq, the revelations of the wiretapping and U.S. attorney scandals, and growing discontent with domestic problems like health care, Americans lost faith in Bush's agenda. Various right-wingers are now trying to salvage conservatism not simply to maintain their own reputations but because they worry that, having soured on Bush, voters may soon sour on the creed of conservatism itself. That would be a turn of events for the right so damaging that not even another Ronald Reagan could repair it.

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Whereas what you say may be true...it is a diversion from the issue at hand...

True...conservastivces talk about the debt....but conservatives will crtiicize anything regarding this president just as liberals will criticize anything about Romney.

However.....

Bush did not run on a platform regarding decreasing the debt.

Obama did.

Bush is no longer president nor is he seeking office again.

Obama IS president and he IS seeking re-election.

Where is th outrage regarding Obama and his outright lie?

 

[Foxfyre]

We all knew in our hearts anything this revolutionary couldn't have been built by a government bureaucracy.


Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?

Contrary to legend, it wasn't the federal government, and the Internet had nothing to do with maintaining communications during a war.

A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet."

Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet? - WSJ.com

A little different twist on that CG:

Yes, the private sector has benefitted from some government research, most especially military research and from NASA. But the government usually doesn't have the private sector in mind when it does it. The rudimentary Internet, for instance, was originally created to facilitate defense-related research as well as to strengthen military command-and-control capabilities. It was most definitely not created “so that all the companies could make money." In fact it was initially intended to be denied to the private sector. In an early ARPANet handbook we find: "It is considered illegal to use the ARPANet for anything which is not in direct support of Government business….Sending electronic mail over the ARPANet for commercial profit or political purposes is both anti-social and illegal."

It was only after such information was declassified that PRIVATE enterprise used some of those concepts and further developed the technology to create the communications systems that we enjoy today. And they did it without any government money.

Which for Obama makes that one a big, fat "oops".

 

[Freewill]

Did anyone think that the biggest strongest economy was never going to recover? But let us remember what was said when Obama and company started spending money we didn't have, it would not help it would hurt. So what did we get, the longest weakest recovery in history and it looks like we may go back into a recession. So the fact is that what Obama did is not working the evidence needed....the debt put on our grandchildren to avoid the pain now. Sad what we have done.