What kind of alternate reality do these Neocons live in?
Shawn Mallow of WizBangBlog wrote on February 13th the following:
The Bush years don’t seem so bad now, huh?
Aside from the constant harping from the Democrats about Iraq, and charges of fear mongering from the liberal left, the economy was in a state of fiscal fitness.
Yet, how often did we hear, throughout the Bush years, of just how awful the economy was?
Well, Shawn, we heard it CONSTANTLY. No, it wasn’t THE LEFT WING MEDIA that was pronouncing it, but the basic facts - along with word on the street. It’s old news - but in the revisionist mind of the dead-enders there’s always room for another fantasy to be presented as fact.
Well, not this time. Here’s the Washington Post just the other day:
The number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush’s tenure, the most tepid growth over any eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans’ incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush’s father.
As they also truthfully point out, the “economic expansion” Bush and his minions like to boast about were numbers filled with as much air as the dot.com bubble. Sure, housing prices increased, but most saw that for what it was - the availability of obscene mortgage products that allowed a bum on the street with two dollars to his name to make some kind of housing purchase. Consumer spending rose, but we all know how - credit cards pumped up with costs few could pay off easily, ever bloating as the last 8 years slowly chugged. And sure, Wall Street made some gains, but the foundation was filled with sand and we are currently at levels seen 6 years ago.
Was any of this foreseeable? Of course it was. Countless articles, news editorials and even film (Maxed Out) gave searing portraits of our credit card culture - and the housing “bubble”, coined by Greenspan, has been referred to by that moniker since 2003.
What we’ve seen over the past 8 years is what we see with every new President - an “attitude” about our culture that becomes part of the public conscience. With Nixon came years of cynicism. With Carter, a down-home feel of getting back to nature. Remember all those ridiculous nature moves - Wilderness Family, Grizzly Adams, etc. With Reagan came the culture of political correctness and renewed jingoism. With Clinton, a laissez faire attitude to sex and with Bush?
Well, Bush gave our culture the gems of his personality - lack of curiosity, fear in black and white, and most profoundly the lifestyle of a spoiled little rich boy (buy now, don’t worry about the credit card. It’ll all work out). For him it was easy. Every dumb financial decision he ever made his family or friends bailed him out of. He even ran our country that way, spending us into oblivion and keeping any regulation at bay (yes, I know Clinton signed Glass-Steagall out of commission, but guess what? That was 9 years ago. No oversight of any sort since - and that doesn’t absolve Chris Cox from sleeping during his entire tenure at the SEC).
So what has the era of Bush given us? An economy that is worse than when he began office. A population out of work or fearful of losing their jobs and an economic collapse that could have been prevented.
But don’t expect that kind of bleak picture from the true believers because even in the darkest hour of this republican disaster we’ve inherited, it’s always someone elses fault. Guess it must all be Obama’s. He has been in office 3 weeks, you know!
