In response to the Tea Party protests and in honor of the taxpayer, let us remember where this all started.
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In response to the Tea Party protests and in honor of the taxpayer, let us remember where this all started.
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Bobbo,
The point I was making is that it is politically trendy to blame Bush for everything, while trying to obfuscate things under Obama.
When Bush was President, you same liberals didn’t try blaming Clinton for passing things along to Bush. I’m merely pointing out a double standard.
Which probably explains why a government with parties in control of opposing branches governs best. So you have runaway spending then and you have runaway spending now. The only difference is tax policies, HOW the legislation got passed, and how the mainstream media spins things.
I really don’t care what a person’s party is. So what? I have no problem with impeaching Bush so long as the litmus test is applied the same way and across the board. It won’t happen because a lot of Democrats would be implicated. You SHOULD know that even though you seem to exercise some partisan play. Now what? You still going to tow the “company line”?
The ONLY thing that should be clear is that I am very anti-government being in my life. I feel empowering the federal government takes away on personal liberties. If you happen to believe that only Republicans think this way, then you have a limited perspective.
Liberal mark perkel stirred you guys up and it worked! Shame on you both. If your position is strong, you will just ignore posts like this and move along.
Being a Christian for instance, the posts on here that mock Christianity are feeble attempts by weak minded religious atheists who are jealous we have meaning in our lives, so i ignore.. relax you guys, this blog isn’t to be taken serous anyways. move along
#39 Bush modernized a very weak military passed onto him by the Clinton Administration. … That takes months and years and as Rumsfeld astutely pointed out, you go to war with what you have not what you’d like to have.
If you look closely, the military wanted tanks to prep for a European ground war. Thank goodness Clinton nixed that $100billion hairball.
Note, he reduced the number of troops by the same number that the first Bush reduced them.
Of course those were the awful years when we had reasonable amount of peace on earth.
McGuyver–well done. If I kept notes on the various players here, perhaps I would have recalled you are an equal opportunity LIEBERTARIAN but I don’t have that info.
Still, I have to call you out. This thread as initiated by our kind moderator was about BushtheRetard being primarily responsible for our current financial meltdown. If you want to raise the thread back to Clinton, thru Regan, to our Founding Fathers, to Beowulf==be my guest but it is YOU who are obfuscating not we liberal leaning progressive libertarians who correctly Identify Bush as the retard in Chief.
If YOU want to claim even-handedness, then that is how you should post, and in this thread, you have not.
My take is that it did take split government==the Repugs not passing spending bills and Clinton getting a tax increases but my memory is fading. YES, definitely, our Republic is designed for Congress to represent the people and that system fails us as it now represents “the Parties” which really is Corporate America. Our Founding Fathers would call for a revolution, at the ballot box or otherwise, over what has happened to this grand experiment.
I challenge you–what exactly did Clinton pass on to Bush that so disarmed Bush he could not act as he wished????? Iraq ONe was fought by the Army that Clinton left Bush. Victorious with hardly a casualty. Shock and Awe!!! Silly to claim intelligence info was lacking when Bush Ignored a report that Ben Laden was Planning an attack within the USA. Vague of course, but not an intelligence system that wasn’t functioning.
Nice dodge: go ahead and do “x” which is possible, as long as you do “y” as well which is not possible or at least not as possible but certainly not as relevant. I think Clinton should be impeached for his dealing with China but you are right, no one cares/not enough care. And Hiliary too. And Bush for letting Cheney lie about Iraq==or for going into Iraq at all. Or for whatever in the hell is going on with BlackWater and on and on. And I would impeach Obama for – - – - for what???? Oh, ok===for not impeaching Bush. Yea, thats the ticket.
No, McGuyver==you are not living up to the standards you give lip service to. More Repuglican than you might realize.
# 15. John McCain was the worst candidate the Republicans could have presented. Truthfully, none of them were that great. I was rooting for Fred Thompson myself, but his performance at the debates left much to be desired.
So, we were stuck as John McCain as the nominee. No one could have saved McCain, especially after Obama became the Democrat nominee. But had he not picked Palin as his running mate, his respectable loss would have been a complete and total massacre.
So Bush was supposed to undo Clinton’s de-regulations against all political odds in the face of everyone is scared of doing any thing that might look like it would hurt poor people, and you guys are happy with Obama STILL not fixing the rules over a year AFTER the mortgage- bubble-created financial crisis has already happened. (All the while creating an even bigger long-term problem with the debt going past the point of no return.)
Pathetic. Get a clue, Obamabots.
#46 That’s right – if the financial institutions were over reaching the deregulation allowed them to expand their business, it’s was Bush’s responsibility to reign them in.
The President is suppose to steer the ship according to current conditions.
Another case in point. Clinton imposed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It sounds silly now but in the 90′s, the government had to balance fairness with the demands of the religious taliban in this country. Today, Obama is doing away with DADT because young voters are less bigoted and much of religious taliban is weakened or dead.
As far as rules for financial institutions go, you are right. He need to do it. However, Obama had to keep the hemorrhaging patient (the economy) from dying. As you may have seen on Fox Snooze, he is ready for that fight now.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/01/21/three-cheers-for-obamas-banking-reforms/
As part of my personal “cleansing” I’m admitting that I voted for Bush the first time around. However, I didn’t make the same mistake twice.
But, I’ve still been kicking myself in the ass since 2000. And, yes, I deserve it.
#48 Thank you for coming clean and for your self imposed exile. In just a few more short years before your punishment is is served we’ll work on your new identity.
My favorite T-Shirt these days:
“I went to a Tea Party and all I got was this same old failed crap!”
>> derspankster said, on April 15th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
>> As part of my personal “cleansing” I’m admitting that I voted for Bush the first time around. However, I didn’t make the same mistake twice.
I won’t kick you anywhere.
Bush was a bit of an unknown in 2000 and he said some OK stuff (most which I doubt he ever intended to do.)
But by 2004, it was clear that Bush was one of the worst president in US history.
Even so, the conservatives GROOVED!!! ON HIM… I mean, they thought he walked on water: Bush was doing FANTASTIC!!! on Iraq and SPECTACULAR!!! with fiscal discipline; sending our jobs overseas was a NATURAL HIGH!!! and drowning in debt to the Saudis and Chinese was FRIGGIN’GREAT!!! Torture and spying on our own citizens… that was TIGHT!!!
I’m glad that wasn’t you.
Republican Tea Baggers like to be angry. So I made them angry. Where is the gratitude? Oh – they don’t do gratitude.
#47 Dallas,
First off – linking to an article entitled ‘Three cheers for Obama’ – funny. Its not a bad article I guess, but from the way things are looking, I do not have much hope that what the dems are proposing is going to solve or prevent anything.
There are really two issues here, preventing securities that are supposed to be safe from being unsafe, and critical financial institutions from failing. Both of these things happened in meltdown. You can solve the problem without imposing rules created by people who don’t even understand the securities involved.
Start by clamping down on the sub-prime mortgage rules. A little of this has been done already, but what happened under Clinton needs to completely be undone. Real estate is either directly or directly tied to all HUGE percent of all securities. Believe it or not, Bush did have concerns about Fannie/Fredie/subprime market and voiced them a few times, but you are right – he did not really do anything about it, and he was under tough opposition from your party of choice in that matter. Next, stop any bank or institution from being ‘too big to fail’. Either make rules limiting size, or make laws preventing them from getting taxpayer money when they fail. You can make rules all day long about specific securities and investment bank trading, and some of these rules should be made, but the sub-prime housing rules and to-big-to-fail are by far more important. You can’t make a law preventing someone from failing. Companies will find a way to take risk – especially when they know they will be bailed out.
I am not sure what your point about DADT is. It sounds like you are saying the president should act based on the current circumstances, and I am saying that is exactly why would expect greater and swifter actions on financial matters than previous presidents.
My point is that it wasn’t obvious how great the risk really was before 2007-2008. It is now, and that should have been one of the first things Obama dealt with, not halting Guantanamo bay terror trials and removing rules on federal funding for abortion. He is over 15 months late now. He done barely anything related to the economy, unless you count spending money. The stimulus package was a horribly inefficient mess packed with liberal pet projects. The only thing that went into effect already and is not related to special interest was the 2009 tax credit, which is just GWB’s horrible recycled idea to get us further in debt. So what else has a done since that bill was passed do deal with the ‘firestorm’?
#40 bobbo -
“Now–Bush had control of EVERYTHING for 6 years and rammed thru the programs he wanted to have rammed thru. If he had wanted to stop the Freddies from forcing bad loans on the Mortgage Industry===he could have.”
REALLY? That is like saying if Obama wanted single payer health care he could have rammed it through. I mean, he has both houses, right? But it took them over a year to ram through one turd of a bill that in no way resembles universal health care and is a huge disappointment to both sides. But he knew even before elected it wouldn’t happen in one step, but that this would be very hard to overturn, and would one day lead to universal health care. Do you think Bush would have had an easier time taking mortgages away from poor people?
I am pretty sure you don’t believe what you are saying, but for some reason you don’t get that other people won’t either.
Clean up Clinton’s mess? You mean that giant budget surplus?
On Clinton’s watch we saw the biggest stock market bubble in history and it collapsed, bringing down the economy. That is why we saw a tax windfall only in his last 3 years in office. You know that. Clinton also gave us Enron and all of the other major blow-ups. Clinton left quite a mess to clean up.
I think we can all agree that Greenspan is the real culprit.
Morons, both sides. The fix has been in FOREVER. And the politicians are laughing at you idiots while you point fingers at each other. me too.
This is all planned and idiots fall for it. You guys really need to wake the fuck up. Obama is a puppet as was Bush Jr. Clinton, Bush senior, RAYgun, Nixon,all the way back to Kennedy at least. But Kennedy didn’t play that, and got two to the head.
Divide and conquer the Idiots, man it’s just way too easy.
#55 Lou,
Obviously, I was talking about his legislation regarding sub-prime mortgages. Sometimes it takes time to see the effects of certain actions. Deficits or budget surpluses are seen immediately. Results of long term economic legislation can take years or decades. Clinton and the Republican Congress in the 90s did a much better job at balancing the budget than we have seen since then, but that really has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
Crank==don’t be simple minded/thinking in labels. Bush got “almost” everything he wanted and often lost only when he varied from what the Repugs wanted. The Dems rarely voted as a block during the Bush years EVEN GOING SO FAR as to support the Iraq Delusion.
Bush could ram things thru, Obama can’t. Don’t be confused by your bumper sticker mentality.
To your other point–it was CLEAR AS IT FRICKKEN COULD BE that the securitized mortgage market and all its sequalia were BOUND TO FAIL.
The numbers are beyond comprehension but are “like” the following===value of USA Home Market/Mortgages==100 Trillion.
Value of Securitized Market==400 Trillion.
Value of Insurance for Securitized Debt Swap Instruments==2000 Trillion.
((Whatever the numbers are!)) Point being–the “economic activity/risk” in play was actually multiples above the actual GDP of the entire planet, or multiple above the value of the underlying supporting assets===as those assets were valued in a constantly inflating value with NO ALLOWANCE for a market deflation.
Do you think Greenspan “really” thinks markets can only go up? Do you think Mega Insurance Co’s should be going around insuring 1 Trillion Dollar portfolios by keeping 10 Million in reserve to back their play and reinsuring the balance with other mega firms doing the same one trick pony???
The fraud is so thick it is suffocating common sense.
And still–no re-outlawing and NO ONE IN JAIL.
All we need to do now is marry our sisters, drink wine from lead glasses, and set fire to Washington===and learn to play the fiddle.
Just curious. I had heard a rumor (I think it was Dvorak & Horowitz) that the other shoe in the real estate bubble was commercial property, and that it was next to drop.
I’ve observed something weird going on in the commercial market in SoCal recently. Landlords are raising rents, despite what appears to be 40-50% vacancies. I personally know a number of small business owners who have had to close, or move, in the last 12 months because of 50% rent hikes.
And yet when they vacate, no one else moves in.
I suspect the reason is that the landlords have to collect a minimum revenue level to meet their mortgage. Otherwise there is no point in paying at all.
Either their mortgage payments have ballooned, or they are trying to force the remaining tenants to cover the revenue they are missing from the vacancies.
So in the landlord’s mind, they have to try to collect enough to meet payments in order to hang on. Or they might as well mail the title to the mortgage company.
Anyhow, they are loosing more and more tenants. More and more small businesses are shutting down because they simply can’t afford it. The people I know have told me that negotiations have gone nowhere, and the landlords won’t budge.
I see this as a sign of a looming commercial realestate bust. Just like the home market, the lenders will have to foreclose and start dumping commercial property on the market.
Good Point Yank. Yes, the future is filled with doom and gloom, commercial real estate just being another slice of the pie.
Similarly, I note my landlord raises my rent every year like clockwork just as if the market was not cratering===same issue you are referencing just in a different market segment.
I wish we had a socialized economy.