America before W.Bush and after W.Bush

[evilbau]

Presidents don't have a lot of power (constitutionally) but they certainly have a lot of influence, which in my mind equates to power. The president cannot create bills/laws. But they write em up anyway and get one of their lackeys in congress to put their name on it. The president and crew are the ones pushing it through congress, making speeches to convince people, etc. Constitutionally, all the president did is sign it into law after it was brought up, argued over, and then passed in congress. That isn't the reality of their power. Biggest example of this is the federal budget. It is usually the president's version that they start with before they negotiate the details.

And in regards to that chart, sure it made me feel nice to blame it on bush years, but its pretty easy to cherry pick stats and there may be other things to put them in greater context. You can say we won't see the results for a decade but there are many effects that only take a couple years to manifest and are pretty damn clear (i.e. tax cut + increased spending turning surplus into gigantic deficit)

[Kwijiboe]

Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans happened because of MANY MANY other people's faults. They knew that the levies would break, and they knew the city was built as a giant bowl. We didn't need George Bush to tell people to send Helicopters and rescue efforts down there, people were too busy finding out who was to blame to do anything.

Blaming that disaster on Bush is about as bad as blaming hurricane katrina on global warming. The people that deserve blame are those that knew about the potential disaster and did nothing about it.

[archibaldcrane]

If all you do is remove the Iraq war from the situation, I think those #s are a lot different in many cases, specifically how other countries view us, and the budget deficit/national debt. Even if that was the only difference between Bush Jr. and a democrat, it's huge.

[Kwijiboe]

And in regards to that chart, sure it made me feel nice to blame it on bush years, but its pretty easy to cherry pick stats and there may be other things to put them in greater context. You can say we won't see the results for a decade but there are many effects that only take a couple years to manifest and are pretty damn clear (i.e. tax cut + increased spending turning surplus into gigantic deficit)

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/history.gif

So right when bush was sworn in to office in the year 2001, he was able to make the deficit grow at that alarming rate in under a span of 6 months? It takes years to see what one event can do to the economy. I'm not saying it's not Bush's fault, no one has the evidence yet, but the fault does not entirely lie with Bush.

The deficit ball has just been building momentum.

[Andarvi]

Doesnt bush as the president appoint his vice president? Didnt he appoint Cheney? Thus, isnt the whole argument of him being a puppet and Cheney and his goons having the "real power" BS because Cheney was only able to get to that position because of decision Bush made?

[Howard Roark]

American law should be changed so you can re-elect clinton (but nobody else). He was heavily pushing a middle east peace plan, all the time, it was great, and then Bush ruined all of clinton's hard work overnight.

thread over

[Kwijiboe]

Doesnt bush as the president appoint his vice president? Didnt he appoint Cheney? Thus, isnt the whole argument of him being a puppet and Cheney and his goons having the "real power" BS because Cheney was only able to get to that position because of decision Bush made?

WHAT?

[Andarvi]

Doesnt bush as the president appoint his vice president? Didnt he appoint Cheney? Thus, isnt the whole argument of him being a puppet and Cheney and his goons having the "real power" BS because Cheney was only able to get to that position because of decision Bush made?

WHAT?

I mean I may be wrong, politics are hardly my thing ill admit, but doesnt the person running for president choose his running mate during the elections?

[Kwijiboe]

Yea.. But the other stuff you said made no sense as it had no relevance to what we were talking about right now.

[evilbau]

And in regards to that chart, sure it made me feel nice to blame it on bush years, but its pretty easy to cherry pick stats and there may be other things to put them in greater context. You can say we won't see the results for a decade but there are many effects that only take a couple years to manifest and are pretty damn clear (i.e. tax cut + increased spending turning surplus into gigantic deficit)

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/history.gif

So right when bush was sworn in to office in the year 2001, he was able to make the deficit grow at that alarming rate in under a span of 6 months? It takes years to see what one event can do to the economy. I'm not saying it's not Bush's fault, no one has the evidence yet, but the fault does not entirely lie with Bush.

The deficit ball has just been building momentum.

well that chart is the national deficit in absolute terms, I think a better indicator is year to year buget surplus/deficit or perhaps by presidency?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_d ... tial_terms

http://www.soul-burn.com/images/budget.JPG

They weren't kidding when they said Reagan spent us into a budget deficit. Honestly, no one presidency will wipe it out, so what matters to me is if we are increasing it or working on reducing it.

[Andarvi]

Yea.. But the other stuff you said made no sense as it had no relevance to what we were talking about right now.

I really doubt that the democrats would have trampled all over the 4th amendment like Cheney and his cabal have.

Demanding retroactive immunity for illegal acts by telecommunications companies is ridiculous. Pardoning fall-guys who are convicted of lying under oath is crazy. Deliberately misleading a whole country to precipitate a full-scale war?

Aurik brought up Cheney and his goons first, I was just asking a question about em. Its hard to talk about anything concerning the Bush administration w/o talking about Cheney.

[Rhinox]

Doesnt bush as the president appoint his vice president? Didnt he appoint Cheney? Thus, isnt the whole argument of him being a puppet and Cheney and his goons having the "real power" BS because Cheney was only able to get to that position because of decision Bush made?

lol no

[Andarvi]

Doesnt bush as the president appoint his vice president? Didnt he appoint Cheney? Thus, isnt the whole argument of him being a puppet and Cheney and his goons having the "real power" BS because Cheney was only able to get to that position because of decision Bush made?

lol no

OK, then enlighten me.

[Tyche]

Did anyone listen to the Bernanke speech a week ago or so? For the most part, it was long and boring, but it did bring up some good points.

To touch on what eaglestrike said, a lot is the .com boom and outsourcing. That had a huge impact on both unemployment and the net export. Our net export, of course will always be negative. We're always always always going to import more than we export, because of the high salaries here and low cost production overseas, not to mention fuel imports. Not that having a negative net export is a big deal, out of the the four major events that can shift the economy (consumer spending, government spending, business investment, and net exports) it probably has the lowest effect. None the less, the outsourcing causes unemployment (destroyer of consumer spending), obviously, which is a huge problem, and the nation has to try to somehow reach an equilibrium with inflation and unemployment, which is proven difficult.

What I can't figure out, is there as been a "general price increase" of goods of around 3.7% in the US from 2 novembers ago to this past november. They attribute most of that to rising fuel costs. Makes sense, anything that you see, feel, or touch has, at one point, been hauled over the road or transported on a plane (or both). Ok, so that makes sense on paper, however, some nations, japan, GB, etc etc have fuel costs upwards of 5 and 6 bucks a gallon. And an island nation like japan imports practically everything. Does that translate to goods being 200% higher in those nations. Obviously, I didn't have much of a foray into finance and economics in college (core classes ftl)...but that kind of intrigued me when I heard the Bernanke speech.

[Metah]

i think president bush is a pretty cool guy. eh starts wars and doesn't afraid of anything.

[ValoursLOLDRG]

We won't see the true results of Bush's presidency until after almost a decade after the man is out of office. A lot of people still don't understand that.

A lot of blame isn't entirely bush's fault, a lot of it is because of his (beloved) predecessor. However, there is plenty more blame to go around.

You should pick up Glenn Beck's An Inconvenient Book, there's a lot of chapters dedicated to this, and it's actually quite a good read.

Best point made in this thread. But people will refuse to acknowledge it because that would mean saying something bad about Bill Clinton.

[Kwijiboe]

The thing is, when the newly elected president steps into office he steps into an "economy elevator."

A president can step into office when the 'elevator' is going down or when the elevator is going up. The president that was in office beforehand has a GREATER impact on the direction of the elevator MORESO than the person riding on it at the current time.

[Deejay]

Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans happened because of MANY MANY other people's faults. They knew that the levies would break, and they knew the city was built as a giant bowl. We didn't need George Bush to tell people to send Helicopters and rescue efforts down there, people were too busy finding out who was to blame to do anything.

Blaming that disaster on Bush is about as bad as blaming hurricane katrina on global warming. The people that deserve blame are those that knew about the potential disaster and did nothing about it.

I'm not blaming him for Katrina, I'm blaming him for the way he handled the situation. It doesn't take a smart person to get helicopter's to New Orleans, but it's sad with 3 other countries have support flown in before Bush even thinks to send the US Guard.

He's always been borderline retarded but that's when he really pushed the bar to pathetic, imo.

[Turambar]

It doesn't take a smart person to get helicopter's to New Orleans, but it's sad with 3 other countries have support flown in before Bush even thinks to send the US Guard.

Yeah because the National Guard for a state isn't under the control of the governor... OWAIT!

[Exoduso]

You can't directly put the blame on him for katrina... did he treat the situation like a complete incompetent moron? sure, but he's not the only one who was supposed to order the evacuation/send help over there.