DISQUS

Bush Bites · 10 months ago

Median income also dropped $2,000 under Bush.

It increased $7,000 under Clinton.

Older_Wiser · 10 months ago

That's an average during the Clinton years. Most of the increase came from NAFTA, CAFTA and the "free trade" sphere and went to top earners. There were lots of workers left out of the 90s "boom" including those making minimum, or near minimum, wages, and industrial workers making a living wage were robbed by an increase in the outsourcing of factories. Not nearly enough Americans got a slice of the "free market" pie.

Clinton was the best Rethuglicon Democrats ever elected, IMHO.

Jay · 10 months ago

He was truly the President from HELL!

Steve_in_CNJ · 10 months ago

bush and cheney turned the clock back to trickle-down (1980s), unmanageable guerilla war (1970s), lawlessness in the oval office (1970s) and theocracy (19th century). the second helpings have made us sicker than the first, which were already pretty bad.

Bubbles · 10 months ago

For every two year's he was in office he pushed this country back by an order of magnatude:
First two years pushed the country back 4 years, Second two years 16 years, Third 32 years 80 years,

TheNeedle · 10 months ago

Obama will be worse. At best, he'll be more of the same. There's no real difference.

Rab · 10 months ago

Predicting? Or just pulling things out of your nether region?

Older_Wiser · 10 months ago

Just more evil, that is, because rightwingers are still unapologetic for his 8 years.

With unemployment among young black men at around 20%, and Hispanics not far behind, and even with white young men becoming increasingly unemployed, not to mention high statistics for women of all races, and the decline in actual wages for all groups except those at the top, the economy is a wrecked ball of wax which will take years to correct.

When you've got teenagers, their parents and grandparents all competing for the same shitty jobs, you know there's a widespread problem.

MR Bill · 10 months ago

Uh, I don't think those were 'boom'; they were 'bubbles'...

Bubbles · 10 months ago

What growth there was during Bush's years came, not from increased efficiency in the economy, but from borrowed money from Chinese Communist Dictators (as Buchanon might say).

The number of jobs that Bush created in the private economy that he loves so much will actually be negative. Any job growth at all will have come from public jobs.

maudgonne · 10 months ago

Oluremi Obasanjo. The first wife of the former Nigerian president Olesegun Obasanjo has broken it in spectacular style with a tell-all autobiography, Bitter-Sweet: My Life with Obasanjo. The author paints a portrait of her husband as a vindictive "master of decoy", a "violent and unrepentant wife-basher", and a man whose "womanising knows no bounds". It couldn't come at a worse time for the 72-year-old Mr Obasanjo who has been busily building a new profile for himself as a pan-African statesman second only to Kofi Annan.

The former general, who has had two stints as Nigeria's biggest Big Man, once as a military ruler from 1976-9 and then as elected president from 1999-2007, is more often seen these days as the United Nations envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo. His credentials as a continental statesman are regularly burnished by Western leaders and he was a particular favourite of neo-cons like Donald Rumsfeld.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/...

maudgonne · 10 months ago

This in-depth analysis is worthy of your nearest five year old or David Broder... Mrs Graham must be crying somewhere, and how this titan of the print world has honed its hindsight...

KarenMrsLloydRichards · 10 months ago

His greatest economic legacy: an unregulated and criminal $55 TRILLION pyramid of junk (US), 150 trillion world-wide.

Madoff is just the tip of the pyramid.

ShirleyGoodnessanMercy · 10 months ago

Bush's news conference this morning is THE most bizarre thing I have ever seen. Clearly Bush is a very sick man. He and Blagojevich are deluded in the extreme, such that they must be sociopaths or something similar.

KarenMrsLloydRichards · 10 months ago

Dry drunks structure their whole lives on denial. And ensure they are surrounded by enablers.

duchessofbilgewater · 10 months ago

And how about when he said he never felt the burden of his office ... it was joyful?????

duchessofbilgewater · 10 months ago

And one of his biggest mistakes was not landing Air Force One in New Orleans??? WTF?? How about his biggest mistake was not doing squat about the people of New Orleans??

brb915 · 10 months ago

Jaysus, duchess, you forgot about his most obsessive moment........throwing out an effing pitch at a baseball game.........................where's my drop three???

LuZenMyMnd · 10 months ago

Duchess, when he said that sh*t about flying OVER New Orleans was a "mistake" I couldn't do anything BUT shake my head. LOL He counted THAT as his Katrina mistake?????

He really doesn't have a clue. No one would have cared if he flew over, or landed, if he had been a man w/an intelligent plan for rescue after the disaster! He still does not get it.

SCLiberal · 10 months ago

Where has this type of reporting been for the past 8 years? And Bush had plenty of help from Democrats as well. I'm unhappy with both sides.

pdxprobert · 10 months ago

What's really stunning is the number of people, the 20-30% club, that think he was just fine, and would vote for him again.. .even though his hatred of oversight and the deliberate dismantling of any govt agency in place to look out for the people, was responsilbe for the worst downturn in our economy since the Great Depression... Many of them fall back to the old ruse, well, he kept us safe... but he didn't... he and key members of his administration had advance knowledge of 9/11 and they did nothing... and it appears, after watching how Bldg 7 fall just like a pre-wired demolition, that they more than likely prepared for 911 to be their enabling event... the one called for in the Project for the New American Century... their Pearl Harbor moment... odd how they got exactly what their plan book said would be necessary to bring the people along... and yes, I'm one of those millions of people who thinks theres something quite wrong with the official story on the events leading up to as well as the days after 911.... without 911, none of what we saw in the last 8 years would have been as easy to accomplish as it was... how can anybody look at Bldg 7 fall straight down on its own footprint and not say to themselves, building don't fall like that...not naturally that is....and let's not forget the anthrax attacks that targets democratic senators that could hold up the passage of the Patriot Act and members of the supposed liberal media... and then just like Mike Connell, the guy being investigated for his role in the 2004 electronic election thefts and for his work as a RNC operative suddenly died in a mysterious plane crash, the supposed perpetrator of the anthrax attacks committed suicide.. how convenient...

brb915 · 10 months ago

well pdx, those 20-30% folks polled that Humpty Dumpty looked great after three whole days in shop and 2 gallons of superglue..........................

MR Bill · 10 months ago

I think the Deadend 20-30% don't all think Bush is any good (or Obama is a Moslem Commie illegal alien). Some of them are just supporting "our team", still thinking themselves the Elect. I mean, I have an uncle who will just never vote Democrat, and we really don't want the old bigot.
And some are rock stupid and still think Bush is a straightshootin' Texas Cowboy...

woodroad34 · 10 months ago

Don't forget it's also the worst employment downturn since his daddy was Prez. And now, with this economic downturn, hate groups are on the rise...that'd be homegrown terrorists to you and me. So much for keeping us safe. My ultra-conservative acquaintance last night said that in 5 years we're going to see how right Bush has been all along. I told him we haven't seen it in 8, what's 5 more years? (BTW, this is the same guy who predicted back in 2000 that we would see what a genius Bush would be after I told him "just watch, Bush has failed at every business he's ever been involved in, not to mention ruining Texas. Our economy is going to fail under him". I'm still waiting for the genius to show, Jim...at the same time I'll hold my breath that Sarah Palin will stop whining.

JustAnOldLady · 10 months ago

and Bush has just confirmed this big-time with his final press conference..............the man is a total idiot, jerkoff........good riddance Bush 43............

duchessofbilgewater · 10 months ago

The WORST!!!! And the press conference was just awful!

Older_Wiser · 10 months ago

Only a complete narcissistic sociopath could have given a final presser like Bush did, as if he is not an elitist bastard from hell. But with his kind, elitism equates with educated intellectualism and we know he never engages in actual learning and thinking...

duchessofbilgewater · 10 months ago

No no -- he said the "elitists" were some of them there European counties.

Older_Wiser · 10 months ago

Yes, I know, but the underlying snub was there--he's right and the rest of the world and those in the US who have a different worldview than he does are totally wrong, of course.

duchessofbilgewater · 10 months ago

yep!

Dave of the Jungle · 10 months ago

He can't see past the end of his narcissistic nose.

LuZenMyMnd · 10 months ago

The republican's really should stop throwing the label around: "Elitest." Since WHEN do the republican's cater to anyone BUT a select few?

duchessofbilgewater · 10 months ago

And has anyone mentioned that he flat out refused to talk about premptive pardons? what do you suppose that means?

EmGD · 10 months ago

I am completely and totally shocked. I thought things were going so well. It's nice to know that, now that it's all said and done. we're finally getting the numbers that prove once and for all that the past eight years were uniquely terrible.You no longer have to walk around feeling like things were terrible or that you might have hallucinated the past eight years, the men in lab coats with the slide rules are here to show you their math and tell them you were right. Bush was sub-Nixon.

http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/

NMRon · 10 months ago

"looks as if" economic growth was bubble driven? Talk about CYA. They were wrong in their pronouncements then and now they're soft-pedaling their complicity in this fiasco.

Indigo · 10 months ago

"Bubble-driven." I like that expression. I also enjoy the hatchet fest that is becoming Bush's last week in office. There's nothing more satisfying than to tell the truth to abusive authority as it scrambles to get out of ear shot.

We're unlikely ever to have the satisfaction those wonderful Parisians had when they dragged Marie Antoinette through the streets of Paris on a cart dressed only in her chemise while the Parisian mob shouted insults at her on the way to the guillotine but ridiculing Bush at his own final press conference is good enough for now.

Or those happy Romans when they dragged Il Duce's body through the streets of Rome or when, in olden days, they would devoutly toss the Pope's body into the Tiber River . . . ah, for the good days. But I digress. . . we're a gentle folk nowadays, some might even say timid.

teammarty · 10 months ago

Ah, nostalgia

I'd even break out my biggest boots to kick that carcass

elizabethcostello · 10 months ago

While this article is trenchant in its criticism, it also repeats a lot of Republican and right-wing cant, and quotes far more GOP-biased sources--the American Enterprise Institute, come on!--than neutral or left-leaning ones. It's not balanced. The truth is that not only in terms of economic policy, but in every single area one can think of, Bush's presidency--and the Republican/right-wing ideas, ideology, policies, and politics it represents and embodies--have set an abysmal standard in the annals of American history. This article and so many like it dodge that basic fact. Reaganism-Friedmanism-Bushism should be deep in a ditch, but by making the argument more about Bush than about his party and its extended record of failure over the last 35 years, the Washington Post, a Bush administration cheerleader for a long time, will make it possible for failed GOP policies to rise up like zombies once again.

Dave of the Jungle · 10 months ago

Submediocre-Rich-Boy

Born to be a disaster.

therepguy · 10 months ago

It would have nice if G. W, Bush would have end his press event today with a simple apology for leave the nation worse off than the way he found it and for putting the nation through all of his Bull Shit these past eight years...but then he would have had to have a real pair of BALLS!

But it would have been nice...

Well, maybe the press will prove the nation with a post election treat by never again covering the SOB... WE CAN HOPE, CAN'T WE?