I hope that you notice that the Bush years are unique for being one of the longest non gain periods since the crash of 1929.

Comment by WaltTheMan — February 22, 2006 @ 11:14 am

Besides, how can anything be “unique” for being “one of” something? Your rhetoric even contradicts itself.

1. Did you notice that the range 1965-1982 is just as flat as the last five years, but is almost twenty years long?

2. Did you notice that the flattening occurs right at or before the 2000 line, when Clinton was still in office?

3. Did you notice that the massive growth curve began just a couple of years after Reagan took office? (Just in case you’re trying to credit Clinton.)

4. Do you have anything to indicate causality beyond just correlation? The latter does not imply the former.

Your own graph belies your interpretation of it. You’re just shooting in the dark, and missing.

Regarding the markets, you are taking as YOUR baseline the maximum values, when everybody now knows (any many knew beforehand) that they were overvalued at the time. Who takes the maximum as the baseline??? The NASDAQ collapse began in March 2000, ten months before Bush took office. Yet you find it plausible to blame him for it! The DOW is now almost back to its maximum, and you ask, “what recovery”!

What specifically did Bush do to cause the decline in the dollar? Remember that our markets were already in steep decline when he took office. Can you fathom a relationship between the markets and the dollar, or must Bush be involved?

How have you been impacted by the declining dollar? How have most people been affected? Well, maybe rich people like George Soros have been severely affected. Wait, Soros makes his money on currency speculation! Maybe he’s profiting from our economic decline! But he funds your party’s political war, so maybe it’s best that you don’t upset him. That’s very shrewd.

Walt, you’re still flailing to demonize Bush without any rational explanations. You pin anything bad to him, regardless of any connection. Similarly, you ignore anything good. This is like the mentality of astrologers, who take credit for the 5% of their predictions that are correct and ignore the 95% that are not.

Have YOU looked at financial pages? NASDAQ bottomed at around 1,100 is now approaching 2,200. DOW bottomed at about 7,100, now nearly 11,100. The highs these were at pre-2001 were widely considered artificial, even before the bubble burst.

Jobs? Sure, lots of jobs were lost in the first couple of years of the Bush administration. Recessions tend to do that. But if you’re paying attention you’ve seen month after month of jobs ADDED to the payroll since September 2003. In fact, about 2.3 million jobs were lost in 2001 and 2002, while almost 4.2 million jobs were added from 2003 through 2005. So our economny has GAINED almost 2 million jobs. Not bad for inheriting a recession, I’d say.

While paying attention, you would also know that the unemployment rate is now 4.7%, about where Clinton had it at the same point in his tenure. At it’s worst it hit 6.3%, far from the worst on record. Look, I’m not claiming Bush is the best thing that ever happened to our economy. I’m just pointing out how insipid it is to claim he destroyed it and how disingenuous it is to blame him for the crash, and then claim there’s been no recovery.

Impeachment? There are enough Democrats in Congress to give the Republicans a really hard time if they wanted to. Republicans want to get reelected too. If the people and the Democrats really wanted an impeachment, even Rove couldn’t stop it. Impeachment makes great flaming rhetoric, but even most Democrats know it won’t fly.

Throwing Rupert in there? Now you’re just being silly. You know very well I was referring to the 2000 election. His strong supporters loved him. I don’t LOVE him, but I think he’s the best choice we had in 2000 and 2004. I’m ready for somebody new in 2008, but it ain’t Hillary, Kerry, or Gore.

2000 recount? National Democrats (not just Florida) wanted to recount the votes from the four counties most beneficial to Gore, using methodologies they were making up on the fly. And the later analysis showed that Gore won under only one of four scenarios, Bush winning in the other three. The court decisions were not appropriate, but the recount was not legal.

Finally, finishing with ad hominem insults is just plain sad. You, Walt, seemed at first to have the most potential to conduct rational discourse. But now you’ve shown that you just threw in some literary references to hide the same tired partisan hatred behind a veneer of intellectualism.

I guess I only have myself to blame. I came here looking for some rationale behind this editorial and allowed myself to be sucked in to combating the standard primate approach to dodging legitimate questions: throw whatever crap you think you have and see what sticks. Don’t bother considering whether it’s relevant to the question at hand.

Since it looks like most people have moved on to other topics on this site, perhaps you were right when you said, “tata,” if nothing else. I’ll go back to my debate-oriented forum and inform them that I still don’t have any answer as to why Cheney’s hunting accident is SOOO much more important than Gore’s deceitful inspiration of terrorism against the U.S.

“If you’re going to blame Bush for the recession he inherited, who do you credit for the recovery to date?”

What recovery? The stock market has tanked since 2001. There is a net job loss of eight million based on statistical records. Do you ever read the business section of any paper or even the WS Journal? Ignorance must be bliss.

“If Iraq was SO illegal, why hasn’t Bush been impeached for it? There’s a lot of crying for that, but the people who could actually do it, aren’t. Maybe it’s not so illegal as you think. And if you think we’ve lost in Iraq, we’re watching different wars. To the press, winning a war isn’t much prettier than losing. That’s why it’s outcomes that matter. And those outcomes include free elections. Sure, it’s been slower than anybody would have liked. But to say we’re losing is to deny the soldiers the credit they deserve.”

Answer to impeachment question – Karl Rove and a Republican congress. Answer to question about war – the insurgents are winning and growing in numbers. Answer to question about elections – W has managed to move Irani mullums into Iraq.

“Bush didn’t “dishearten a nation”. He disheartened the people who hated him all along. He inspired the people who loved him. Everybody else is in the grey zone. Nobody disheartens a nation like Carter can. Besides, Hitler inspired a nation, too.”

Answer to this item, the only person on Earth who loves W is Barbara (besides you and Ruppert). He is as inspiring as Winky Dink (and that’s a stretch).

“If 2000 had gone as it should have, either A) the Florida Secretary of State would have called it based on the election returns she had (Bush), or B) the Florida House of Representatives (majority Republican) would have voted for their state electoral votes (probably Bush). Instead, Gore sued Florida demanding a recount using methodologies that weren’t legal. So when he lost in appeal, it fell to A). Then Bush won without caveat in 2004. It’s time to get over it. Really. nobody but this crowd cares about 2000.”

Florida Democrats wanted to count the vote. Analysis later showed that W lost the vote there. Ohio was even worse

“Finally, if Bush really was “never elected,” that only means he could run again in 2008. Be careful what you insist upon.”

I would not be concerned about that. Even if they evacuated every asylum in the nation, W would be out the door.

Tata, and be sure to take your meds. Do you free base?

If you’re going to blame Bush for the recession he inherited, who do you credit for the recovery to date?

If Iraq was SO illegal, why hasn’t Bush been impeached for it? There’s a lot of crying for that, but the people who could actually do it, aren’t. Maybe it’s not so illegal as you think. And if you think we’ve lost in Iraq, we’re watching different wars. To the press, winning a war isn’t much prettier than losing. That’s why it’s outcomes that matter. And those outcomes include free elections. Sure, it’s been slower than anybody would have liked. But to say we’re losing is to deny the soldiers the credit they deserve.

Bush didn’t “dishearten a nation”. He disheartened the people who hated him all along. He inspired the people who loved him. Everybody else is in the grey zone. Nobody disheartens a nation like Carter can. Besides, Hitler inspired a nation, too.

If 2000 had gone as it should have, either A) the Florida Secretary of State would have called it based on the election returns she had (Bush), or B) the Florida House of Representatives (majority Republican) would have voted for their state electoral votes (probably Bush). Instead, Gore sued Florida demanding a recount using methodologies that weren’t legal. So when he lost in appeal, it fell to A). Then Bush won without caveat in 2004. It’s time to get over it. Really. Nobody but this crowd cares about 2000.

Finally, if Bush really was “never elected,” that only means he could run again in 2008. Be careful what you insist upon.

…
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0312/final.pdf

“Second, the detainees did not make blanket allegations of mistreatment, but distinguished certain MDC officers as abusive and others as professional. Also, the detainees’ allegations about their treatment at the MDC contrasted with their description of their treatment at other detention facilities. Most detainees did not have complaints about their treatment at other institutions or by other officers – their allegations of abuse generally were confined to their treatment at the MDC.”
…

This is precisely what I was speculating about when I said, “by my reading of your post, any such actions were probably committed by individual guards, who should be investigated.” I hadn’t even seen the report myself. That just goes to show that a little healthy skepticism can help prevent sheepism.

And what does this say about the veracity of AI? Tracy pointed out a clear contradiction between the OIG report and AI’s interpretation of said report. Does anybody want to speculate on whether the contradiction was a mistake or intentional? How about Gore’s speech? Mistake or intentional? Does it matter?

I was satirizing, but then I wasn’t that far off. W Has no respect for human life, no pathos for anyone not in the top .7% of the income pool, no rational capabilities and no connection with reality.

I’m just going to have to disagree with pretty much your entire characterization of him. I doubt you have any more insight into his soul than I, so I’ll just go with what I think of the man. That means the two of us will look at the same information and come to two completely different conclusions. We’re looking at two different “people.” Extrapolate that over the entire voting population and you have an election. And Bush won the last election without any footnotes.

I referenced “Mein Kempf” because it provides the administration’s business plan for destroying America. I’ve read the works of all of the wartime leaders in the WWII period (both sides). For FDR, I had to rely on transcripts of his speeches. I did that study because I wanted to understand what was driving them. From that experience, I know that W is no FDR, Churchill, Eisenhower, Monty, Patton or Mac Author. That leaves Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hirohito. Take your pick.

Like every analogy, WWII is an imperfect one to modern times. And leaders come in more than ten models, assuming each one you cited is considered perfectly unique. Don’t forget the grey zones between them. How you justify saying Bush is closer to Hitler than FDR, is beyond me.

“Yes, I believe in the rule of law, so I am an American, not a partisan sheep”

That has nothing to do with what I said about asking if you were an American. How would I have known that you were an American? This is an international blog you know.

“Oh, and how do all you Bush lovers like their port deal with the UAE?”

I am totally against it, for obvious reasons!!

“And you dare to bitch about Al Gore telling a truth about their behavior that would put Americans in danger as treasonous?”

The truth!!? LOL! He a damn liar when he said that Muslims were rounded up after 9/11 INSIDE THE U.S. and kept in “unspeakable” conditions. He has absolutely no proof of his BS claim. Did you not hear what he said? Obviously not. The OIGs report reveals that abuses by MDC staff were unwarranted, but there is NOTHING in the report that suggests the the detainees were held in “unspeakable” conditions as Al Gore suggested. Telling an absolute lie to people in a country where the majority of the 9/11 hijackers came from it traitorous.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0312/final.pdf

“Second, the detainees did not make blanket allegations of mistreatment, but distinguished certain MDC officers as abusive and others as professional. Also, the detainees’ allegations about their treatment at the MDC contrasted with their description of their treatment at other detention facilities. Most detainees did not have complaints about their treatment at other institutions or by other officers – their allegations of abuse generally were confined to their treatment at the MDC.”

AI:

“Although the OIG report gives a clear picture of the abominable treatment these men endured”

Al Gore said that the conditions in which these detainees were held were “unspeakable”. Where is AI’s first hand assessment of the conditions, i.e. the environment, in which these detainees at MDC or ELSEWHERE were held? Where is Gore’s proof that the conditions were “unspeakable”. Telling an absolute lie to people in a country where the majority of the 9/11 hijackers came from it traitorous, not to mention it is tatamount to giving aid an comfort, in that the terrorists can use Gore’s words, a former U.S. VP, as a propoganda tool to bolster support for their cause in the heart of the Muslim world.

“I support Al Gore and always will. You don’t like that, tough. This is America. Suck it up.”

Good!…I hope he gets the nomination in 2008! LOL!

BTW I heard that former president Carter is in support of the UAE port deal the Bush administration is promoting?