Bush Reconsidered We’ve reached the point for some perspective on the much-derided 43

[Wehrwolfen]

Bush Reconsidered…We’ve reached the point for some perspective on the much-derided 43rd president.​

Victor Davis Hanson @ NRO:


George W. Bush left office in January 2009 with one of the lowest job-approval ratings for a president (34 percent) since Gallup started compiling them — as compared to Harry Truman’s low of 32 percent, Richard Nixon’s of 24 percent, and Jimmy Carter’s of 34 percent — and to the general derision of the media.

At times the venom accorded Bush in popular culture reached absurd — and even sick — levels. Alfred A. Knopf, for example, infamously published Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint, a pathetic riff on shooting Bush. Gabriel Range’s unhinged 2006 “docudrama,” The Death of a President, focused on an imagined assassination of President Bush (imagine the outcry should any filmmaker today update thattopos). A sick Charlie Brooker op-ed in the Guardian called for another John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald to kill Bush. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic more or less permanently ruined his reputation by writing an adolescent rant on “the case for Bush hatred,” one that began creepily with “I hate President George W. Bush.” Try substituting another president’s name for Bush’s and see what the reaction of The New Republic would be.

All that hysteria once led to Charles Krauthammer’s identification of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” — a pathology in which the unbalanced seemed to channel all their anxieties, frustrations, and paranoias onto George W. Bush. And yet, following 9/11, Bush had calmly led the nation and enjoyed one of the highest positive appraisals of any president since the advent of modern polling, when for months he registered a 90 percent approval rating; indeed, he averaged a 62 percent approval rating over his first four years.

Yet, as with all presidents, with time and a successor come perspective. So it is not hard to see why the out-of-office Bush’s likability ratings are slowly inching back up — most recently to 46 percent. For reflection on Bush’s eight years in office, take a look back at the six aspects of his presidency that harmed his popularity most — Iraq and its attendant controversies, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the so-called Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols, the September 2008 financial meltdown, the chronic budget deficits, and the general impression that Bush was singularly inarticulate and prone to embarrassing gaffes.

“Bush lied, thousands died,” was a popular mantra that followed from the absence of stockpiles of WMD in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — the chief casus belli of the Iraq War. But looking back, quite apart from the politics of the moment, we now remember that Congress had approved 23 writs authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein. The pro-war speeches of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton were simply amplifications of President Clinton’s signing into law of the 1998 “Iraq Liberation Act,” in which were outlined in graphic detail the dangers of the Hussein WMD arsenal. We do not know what exactly happened to those weapons, but perhaps the end sometime soon of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria — amid rampant rumors of a sizable WMD depot — could shed some light on prior cross-border traffic between Assad and Hussein. More important, Saddam Hussein’s oil-rich Iraq never became another North Korea or Iran. His removal also had a salutary effect in convincing Moammar Qaddafi to dismantle his own WMD program, and may have helped to convince Assad to leave Lebanon. In any case, Saddam was the first of many Middle Eastern strongmen to fall.


Read more:
Bush Reconsidered…We

 

[elvis]

reconsidering.....

nope. I still think he was terrible.

 

[Dot Com]

why does it seem like wehrwolfen is allowed to relentlessly spam the board w/ her cut' paste jobs that might even constitute copyright infringement??? Every day she comes on here & posts 5-10 threads in @ 15 mins made up of copyrighted mat'l w/ little to no commentary of her own. Is she even a person or a rw spamming program

 

[Article 15]

Bush Reconsidered…We’ve reached the point for some perspective on the much-derided 43rd president.​

Victor Davis Hanson @ NRO:


George W. Bush left office in January 2009 with one of the lowest job-approval ratings for a president (34 percent) since Gallup started compiling them — as compared to Harry Truman’s low of 32 percent, Richard Nixon’s of 24 percent, and Jimmy Carter’s of 34 percent — and to the general derision of the media.

At times the venom accorded Bush in popular culture reached absurd — and even sick — levels. Alfred A. Knopf, for example, infamously published Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint, a pathetic riff on shooting Bush. Gabriel Range’s unhinged 2006 “docudrama,” The Death of a President, focused on an imagined assassination of President Bush (imagine the outcry should any filmmaker today update thattopos). A sick Charlie Brooker op-ed in the Guardian called for another John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald to kill Bush. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic more or less permanently ruined his reputation by writing an adolescent rant on “the case for Bush hatred,” one that began creepily with “I hate President George W. Bush.” Try substituting another president’s name for Bush’s and see what the reaction of The New Republic would be.

All that hysteria once led to Charles Krauthammer’s identification of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” — a pathology in which the unbalanced seemed to channel all their anxieties, frustrations, and paranoias onto George W. Bush. And yet, following 9/11, Bush had calmly led the nation and enjoyed one of the highest positive appraisals of any president since the advent of modern polling, when for months he registered a 90 percent approval rating; indeed, he averaged a 62 percent approval rating over his first four years.

Yet, as with all presidents, with time and a successor come perspective. So it is not hard to see why the out-of-office Bush’s likability ratings are slowly inching back up — most recently to 46 percent. For reflection on Bush’s eight years in office, take a look back at the six aspects of his presidency that harmed his popularity most — Iraq and its attendant controversies, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the so-called Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols, the September 2008 financial meltdown, the chronic budget deficits, and the general impression that Bush was singularly inarticulate and prone to embarrassing gaffes.

“Bush lied, thousands died,” was a popular mantra that followed from the absence of stockpiles of WMD in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — the chief casus belli of the Iraq War. But looking back, quite apart from the politics of the moment, we now remember that Congress had approved 23 writs authorizing the removal of Saddam Hussein. The pro-war speeches of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton were simply amplifications of President Clinton’s signing into law of the 1998 “Iraq Liberation Act,” in which were outlined in graphic detail the dangers of the Hussein WMD arsenal. We do not know what exactly happened to those weapons, but perhaps the end sometime soon of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria — amid rampant rumors of a sizable WMD depot — could shed some light on prior cross-border traffic between Assad and Hussein. More important, Saddam Hussein’s oil-rich Iraq never became another North Korea or Iran. His removal also had a salutary effect in convincing Moammar Qaddafi to dismantle his own WMD program, and may have helped to convince Assad to leave Lebanon. In any case, Saddam was the first of many Middle Eastern strongmen to fall.


Read more:
Bush Reconsidered…We

 

[percysunshine]

reconsidering.....

nope. I still think he was terrible.

Um...the alternative was...

 

[del]

reconsidering.....

nope. I still think he was terrible.

Um...the alternative was...

just as bad


thanks for playing; be sure to pick up your free copy of dreams of my father on your way out

drive safely

 

[tjvh]

reconsidering.....

nope. I still think he was terrible.

Um...the alternative was...

 

[Dot Com]

 

[g5000]

When the Republican Party and the more retarded of their minions admit, loud and clear, that waterboarding is torture, then I will believe they are making moves back from insanity.

Until then, all I hear is the sound of someone gargling piss.

 

[Wehrwolfen]

President Obama's Legacy: $20 Trillion in Debt for 2016 Victor​

The fiscal-cliff negotiations have deteriorated into an embarrassing travesty of competing press conferences, off-the-record remarks, closed meetings, and sound bites. The Republican side is frustrated and flabbergasted by the absence of a concrete proposal from the President that can be scored by the Congressional Budget Office and then “marked up” by Congress according to standard procedures. Vague offers of so and so many trillions of revenue increases and spending cuts spread over a decade are just words, not real proposals.

The last serious fiscal-cliff projections date back to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) August 2012 assessment of the budgetary effects of various fiscal policy alternatives. In its August study, the CBO – the “gold standard” of budget projections — calculated the budgetary consequences of going over the fiscal cliff in its “baseline projection.” It then projected the budgetary effects of alternative fiscal policies, among them, extending the Bush tax cuts and shelving the sequestered spending cuts.

We may agree or disagree with the CBO’s projections, but they are the most authoritative we have. President Obama has been vocal with respect to the fiscal policies he wants, and each item on his wish list can be scored using the CBO’s August study. Therefore, we can approximate the five-year deficits that would result if President Obama gets what he wants. This is not rocket science. Anyone can do this using the CBO’s excel files.
CBO | An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022


Read more:
President Obama's Legacy: $20 Trillion in Debt for 2016 Victor - Forbes

 

[Article 15]

When the Republican Party and the more retarded of their minions admit, loud and clear, that waterboarding is torture, then I will believe they are making moves back from insanity.

Until then, all I hear is the sound of someone gargling piss.

I hope you aren't holding your breath, dude.

 

[Avatar4321]

Why do we need to reconsider Bush? He isn't President. He cant ever be President again. It's 2013. We need to be addressing current problems not rehashing decades old arguments.

 

[healthmyths]

why does it seem like wehrwolfen is allowed to relentlessly spam the board w/ her cut' paste jobs that might even constitute copyright infringement??? Every day she comes on here & posts 5-10 threads in @ 15 mins made up of copyrighted mat'l w/ little to no commentary of her own. Is she even a person or a rw spamming program

"Commentary on her own"???

You mean MAKING UP STORIES ? GIVEN opinions BASED ON HYPERBOLE, HYSTERIA???
Because YOU can't think or research on your own.. YOU criticize her for posting FACTS???

HERE criticize THIS!!!

FACTS that NO ONE HAS YET REFUTED AS FALSE! FACTS that show a direct cost of $100 billion a year all due to events NO president could have Prevented ..maybe except your feeble worship of the Messiah... Obama!!! But HE FAILED to halt Sandy though so he really isn't a god you know!!!

From 2001 to 2008 DUMB FU<<K THESE EVENTS OCCURRED AND IS COSTING $100 billion a year IN LOST FEDERAL TAX REVENUE!!
Taxpayers that suffered $8 trillion in business losses, market losses, homes, property are able to reduce THEIR TAX Payments by $100 billion a year since 2002!
A) Didn't the marvelous dot.com ( that Clinton phony surplus bubble)* bust occur? YES! What did it cost?
1) $5 trillion in market losses which meant the taxpayers who had tax liabilities of $60 billion from 2002 and beyond GONE!
2) 300,000 jobs lost due to dot.com busts....billions in payroll taxes!!!

Do YOU think those people that had $5 trillion in losses DIDN"T report those losses in their ADJUSTED TAX INCOME over the next 30 years which is what IRS allows?
For example if a Dot.com investor loss $1 million of that $5 trillion that means the investor has 30 years to write off against taxable income $33,000.
So Instead of having a tax on $1 million or at 35% $350,000 by subtracting $33,000 from $1 million that means taxes of 35% on $966,000 or $338,000 a loss to the US treasury of $12,000 from just this $1 million of the $5 trillion!
Or for every $1 million in losses $12,000 loss in tax revenue or on the $5 trillion nearly $60 billion in tax revenue for each year from 2003 and 30 years forward.

B) Did 9/11 happen??? YES what did that cost?
1) Then we had 9/11 which cost $2 trillion or at the above example another $24 billion in loss tax revenue from 2004 and next 30 years.
2)145,00 jobs lost in NYC alone due to 9/11... what did that cost? Billions in payroll taxes!

and regarding hurricanes... THE WORST SEASONS not hurricanes like Sandy SEASONS!!!
C) DID the worst hurricane SEASONS not hurricanes SEASONS occur? YES what did that cost?
Hurricanes cost $1 trillion.. at the above another $12 billion in loss tax revenue.
the top 36 hurricanes since 1926 13 occurred from 2001 to 2008.
Of the total of $316 billion in damages these 13 cost 58% of that or $156 billion.
# 1Katrina (LA/MS/AL/SE FL) 2005 3 $81,000,000,000
# 3 through 7 hurricanes occurred from 2001 to 2008!
That adds up to almost $100 billion a year from these 3 events in REDUCED TAX REVENUE!


AND YOU have the idiocy to accuse her of NOT providing "commentary"????? IT's CoMMENTARY that passed the stupid ACA when the FACTS were glaringly being ignored!

 

[percysunshine]

reconsidering.....

nope. I still think he was terrible.

Um...the alternative was...

just as bad


thanks for playing; be sure to pick up your free copy of dreams of my father on your way out

drive safely

Ok...this is a fair point.. Thanks Del.

What would the world be like now, 12 years later, if Gore won the 2000 election?

I am thinking Obama would never have taken the national stage.....

Um....Del is starting to convince me that a Bush loss in 2000 would have been a good thing...

 

[Dot Com]

 

[theHawk]

When the Republican Party and the more retarded of their minions admit, loud and clear, that waterboarding is torture, then I will believe they are making moves back from insanity.

Until then, all I hear is the sound of someone gargling piss.

Of course waterboarding is torture.....and it works.

Now go back to your piss gargling.

 

[Wehrwolfen]

why does it seem like wehrwolfen is allowed to relentlessly spam the board w/ her cut' paste jobs that might even constitute copyright infringement??? Every day she comes on here & posts 5-10 threads in @ 15 mins made up of copyrighted mat'l w/ little to no commentary of her own. Is she even a person or a rw spamming program

Just to let you know, I'm not a woman. I'm a father, grandfather and great grandfather. Let's hope that you live long enough under Obama to achieve nearly that status in life.

 

[francoHFW]

There's a certainty that EVERYONE on average will live longer under O-care. Even your (insert insult) offspring (not status per se).

 

[francoHFW]

Booosh will suq forever- even makes Raygun look worse lol...ended that Reaganism thing, except for tinfoil dupes...see sig pp1.

 

[clevergirl]

why does it seem like wehrwolfen is allowed to relentlessly spam the board w/ her cut' paste jobs that might even constitute copyright infringement??? Every day she comes on here & posts 5-10 threads in @ 15 mins made up of copyrighted mat'l w/ little to no commentary of her own. Is she even a person or a rw spamming program

"Commentary on her own"???

You mean MAKING UP STORIES ? GIVEN opinions BASED ON HYPERBOLE, HYSTERIA???
Because YOU can't think or research on your own.. YOU criticize her for posting FACTS???

HERE criticize THIS!!!

FACTS that NO ONE HAS YET REFUTED AS FALSE! FACTS that show a direct cost of $100 billion a year all due to events NO president could have Prevented ..maybe except your feeble worship of the Messiah... Obama!!! But HE FAILED to halt Sandy though so he really isn't a god you know!!!

From 2001 to 2008 DUMB FU<<K THESE EVENTS OCCURRED AND IS COSTING $100 billion a year IN LOST FEDERAL TAX REVENUE!!
Taxpayers that suffered $8 trillion in business losses, market losses, homes, property are able to reduce THEIR TAX Payments by $100 billion a year since 2002!
A) Didn't the marvelous dot.com ( that Clinton phony surplus bubble)* bust occur? YES! What did it cost?
1) $5 trillion in market losses which meant the taxpayers who had tax liabilities of $60 billion from 2002 and beyond GONE!
2) 300,000 jobs lost due to dot.com busts....billions in payroll taxes!!!

Do YOU think those people that had $5 trillion in losses DIDN"T report those losses in their ADJUSTED TAX INCOME over the next 30 years which is what IRS allows?
For example if a Dot.com investor loss $1 million of that $5 trillion that means the investor has 30 years to write off against taxable income $33,000.
So Instead of having a tax on $1 million or at 35% $350,000 by subtracting $33,000 from $1 million that means taxes of 35% on $966,000 or $338,000 a loss to the US treasury of $12,000 from just this $1 million of the $5 trillion!
Or for every $1 million in losses $12,000 loss in tax revenue or on the $5 trillion nearly $60 billion in tax revenue for each year from 2003 and 30 years forward.

B) Did 9/11 happen??? YES what did that cost?
1) Then we had 9/11 which cost $2 trillion or at the above example another $24 billion in loss tax revenue from 2004 and next 30 years.
2)145,00 jobs lost in NYC alone due to 9/11... what did that cost? Billions in payroll taxes!

and regarding hurricanes... THE WORST SEASONS not hurricanes like Sandy SEASONS!!!
C) DID the worst hurricane SEASONS not hurricanes SEASONS occur? YES what did that cost?
Hurricanes cost $1 trillion.. at the above another $12 billion in loss tax revenue.
the top 36 hurricanes since 1926 13 occurred from 2001 to 2008.
Of the total of $316 billion in damages these 13 cost 58% of that or $156 billion.
# 1Katrina (LA/MS/AL/SE FL) 2005 3 $81,000,000,000
# 3 through 7 hurricanes occurred from 2001 to 2008!
That adds up to almost $100 billion a year from these 3 events in REDUCED TAX REVENUE!


AND YOU have the idiocy to accuse her of NOT providing "commentary"????? IT's CoMMENTARY that passed the stupid ACA when the FACTS were glaringly being ignored!