At the request of faust,

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

I shall spend 5 good minutes going
over why, the village idiot is the worst
president in American history.

Economically

This president will go down as one of the worst
economic president in history.

Remember one fact here, it takes the creation of 150,000
jobs per month, for the economy to be considered going
forward. That is from economic 101 I took in college.

I got this from the bureau of labor statics,
from 1991 to 2000, employment status of the civilian
non-institutional population in the United States
grew 19’175’000 (19 million 175 thousand)
That works out per month to 177’916 jobs
created in those 9 years.

Since 2001 to 2006 (so far) the job creation
has been 7’396’000, which works out
to 112’060 thousand job created per month
since 2001. This represents a gain of only 1.5%
which means the job rate is what we normally get
during recession months, occurred just before a recession,
or were during the “jobless recovery” of 1992 and early 93
and that is over the last 50 years. Bushes so called “recovery”
is what we get during a recession.

It is not just the crummy job creation during the village
idiot years, real wages have fallen since August 2003
to June 2006, twenty cents.
In just about every single category, bush has
fallen below clinton in economic issues.
Clinton had a 236 billion surplus in 2000,
archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITIC … on.surplus

today bush has an 8 trillion dollar deficit,
the worst deficit in American and world history.
The ratio of of debt to GDP went down an average of 3.89%
during the Clinton years but has gone up an average of 0.94%
during bush years.

The number of full time to part time jobs
clinton created more full time jobs
village has created more part time jobs.
this implies that a greater share of workers have less
stable work with fewer benefits. under clinton, the ratio of
full time to part time work rose by 0.11 but has decreased
under bush by an annual rate of 1.67.

the next stat is jobs with good wages. During the clinton
years job growth was in jobs that were higher paying
jobs. The score for clinton was 4.70 jobs creation
with good pay. The score for bush is -1.0 which means
bush job creation was in the low end pay.

And in health insurance,
under clinton the share of american covered
by health insurance went up 0.12 annually.
under bush there has been a 0.55% decrease in Americans
with health care.

Per ca pita GDP. which means how much output there is each year
relative to the total population. Per capita GDP rose 2.42%
during clinton years, under bush 1.62%, this is mostly because
fewer people are working under bush.

Poverty reduction the number of americans below the poverty
line fell 2.29% annually during clinton, and rose under bush
4.33% annually in the bush years.

Home ownership rose in clinton years 1.94% during
clinton years, and only increased 0.37 during the bush
years.

ppionline.org/ndol/print.cfm … tid=252964

this is the economic failure. I shall get to other failures
later.

Kropotkin

2

Ok, next foreign policy.

There has not been a single success
story for this administration.
The middle east is a disaster, from afghanistan
to lebanon, not a good story anywhere there.
Bush himself has said, his legacy is in Iraq,
and that is a complete and utter disaster.

Americans have gone from being well liked
the world over to being disliked the world over
in 6 short years. Due to complete incompetence
in foreign matters.

pewglobal.org.reports

Two years ago, there was the largest protest
marches, in the history of the world and they
were against the american war in Iraq.
Over 18 million people march world wide against
america.

1800 days. That is the number of day OSAMA has been
free since 9/11. The attack that launch two wars and
still Osama is still free, thanks to the wrong war
at the wrong time in Iraq. Enough said.

South america= due to bush focus on Iraq,
Chavez in venezuela is now the power in Latin
and south america. Iran and North Korea
have not been slowed down in 6 years,
neither is really close to nuclear weapons,
but neither have been brought to the table for
talks.

There has not been a single success in the bush administration
in matters of foreign affairs.

Kropotkin

3

I have challenged people to come up
with a single bush success in 6 years of the
presidency and the most anyone could come
up with was “he was re-elected”.
that is pretty much it. there
have been no success in the bush years.

Kropotkin

4

I have more to go, but am tired so off to bed I go,
tomorrow I shall complete this bit about the village idiot.

Kropotkin

5

Peter, I think that Clinton was a better president than Bush. I’m just not sure how much credit any president gets for the economy, especially while he’s still in office. It’s not like a light switch.

I wonder how we cannot give him credit for the fact that we haven’t been attacked again. He can hardly be held wholly responsible for the first attack - there is a clear history of failures to perceive the danger effectively before he was elected, and he hadn’t been in office very long when it happened. But it’s difficult to believe that the enemy hasn’t attempted a followup. This might not be dramatic or sexy, but it might be true.

6

Faust, PK is convinced G’Dub controls the weather- and forces it to rain on PK.

7

:laughing:

Excellent commentary. Good show.

-Thirst

8

Wait 2 months.

I swear when I read this I thought ‘Faust knew I would read this and so typed up something in the tone of voice which would piss me off the most’. Well jokes on you sucker, cause I’m walking on sunshine. oh ohhh

9

Gobbo - I am chagrinned to say that I wasn’t thinking about you at all when I wrote that. I’ll try to keep you in mind in future posts, however.

10

Phaedrus: Faust, PK is convinced G’Dub controls the weather- and forces it to rain on PK."

K: I live in sunny California. It rains from thanksgiving to
easter and thats about it. So no, it doesn’t rain on me.

Thanks for asking.

Kropotkin

11

faust: Peter, I think that Clinton was a better president than Bush. I’m just not sure how much credit any president gets for the economy, especially while he’s still in office. It’s not like a light switch.

K: I note that bush had no (zero) job
growth in his first term, the first president since
hoover to have that happen. Hoover was president
from 1928-1932. There have been 11 presidents from Hoover
to Bush lite, and bush had the worst 1st term job growth
of any of them. we have had war, depression and recessions
during those 11 presidents 1st term and yet they all had
better job growth. By just about any standard you have, bush
economic policy have failed, unless you are a multimillionaire,
and the bush policies suit you just fine because he keeps giving
multimillionaires huge tax cuts, welfare for the rich programs.

F: I wonder how we cannot give him credit for the fact that we haven’t been attacked again. He can hardly be held wholly responsible for the first attack - there is a clear history of failures to perceive the danger effectively before he was elected, and he hadn’t been in office very long when it happened. But it’s difficult to believe that the enemy hasn’t attempted a followup. This might not be dramatic or sexy, but it might be true."

K: to hold his standard, that we haven’t been attacked is silly,
because world wide terrorism is up. And yes, he can
be held accountable because on Aug 6, 2001, A Pdb came
to his desk, and the title of the PDB was “bin ladin determined to
strike america” and after reading this, how many meetings did
bush have to discusse this PDB, NONE.

Kropotkin

12

But Peter, we don’t pay him to protect other counties. That is a red herring.

You are ignoring everything that did and did not happen before he took office. Bin Laden didn’t drop from the sky on Inauguration Day.

While I can appreciate your enthusiasm, this is just overkill. I wonder why you don’t blame Roosevelt for not making a pre-emptive strike on Tokyo Harbor long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. We`knew they didn’t like us.

And how can we forgive him for not destroying the German U-boat fleet before it ever blew up a US Merchant Marine ship? Or at least after the first one?

Why didn’t Mckinley attack Cuba before the Maine was blown up?

Why don’t we attack everybody, and then all the conceivable threats would be gone?

Or is that just silly?

Or, if he is to be made accountable, what action should he take? None that he has is acceptable to you. What should he have done after the meeting?

13

he has accomplished plenty and i’m sure he would be offended by your accusations … expect to be wiretapped you unpatriotic terrorist:

  • he hasn’t snorted cocaine up his nose since 2000.
  • he saved the sanctity of marriage by endorsing the anti-gay marriage amendment.
  • he closed that annoying gap between church and state a little bit by allowing churches to compete for $8 billion in HUD grants (churches like jerry falwell, a well-known universal do-gooder, not a hater like many people claim he is).
  • protected the U.S.'s rights to torture by threatening to veto legislature that contained anti-torture language.
  • he overcame a silly little privacy right issue in order to allow minors/students’ personal info to be freely given to the military for recruitment purposes despite the school’s desires to maintain rights of privacy … stupid schools …

more accomplishments available but these should get you past the misconceptions that he has not made great achievements during his glorious time in office.

14

Faust

Look up a book called “Against All Enemies: inside the war on terror”. It’s a chronicling of Bush’s actions in respect to terrorism and Iraq, by Dick Clarke, the former counter-terrorism czar.

If you read it you’ll find that Bush did infact have a single-minded drive to attack Iraq with or without a link to terrorism, EVEN BEFORE 9/11. In addition Clarke, claims that Bush ignored repeated warnings about the threat Al Qaeda poses, and so on… He also accuses Bush of boching the war on terrorism by focusing on the irrelevant Iraq, when Afghanistan was prime target. Didn’t you ever wonder how it is that Bin Laden got away when we knew where he was? Why wasn’t the initial attack and invasion of Afghanistan much more comprehensive than it was?

The offical white house response to Dick Clarke’s book, is that he is mad because he wasn’t in “the loop”…He thought he should have had an important role in the government, and we didn’t give it to him. Does this response do anything other than affirm that Bush ignored Al Qaeda and the threat they posed, along with other terrorists.

15

Nihilistic - Single-minded drive? I’ll buy that. Ignore threats? I can buy that, but I would call that part of the incompetence that Peter always speaks of. Why exclude this from W’s incompetence? I agree that we should not have attacked Iraq. I think we underestimated Afghanistan. We have made this mstake before. We will make it again. The Russians made this mistake, and we made it in Vietnam. Some of this is politics. Far from it being due to the people’s fear of government, it’s the government’s fear of the people.

I have never denied that Bush ignored the seriousness of the threat. I deny that he is evil.

16

After all is said and done, Bush will go down as one of the worst presidents this country ever had. Enumerating all of the reasons really won’t add to or change that. No one need to point out the obvious. I have to agree with faust. He isn’t evil, he just isn’t the brightest bulb in the package. If you want to explore the forces of ineptness, look just a bit lower down the food chain…

17

tentative: After all is said and done, Bush will go down as one of the worst presidents this country ever had. Enumerating all of the reasons really won’t add to or change that. No one need to point out the obvious. I have to agree with faust. He isn’t evil, he just isn’t the brightest bulb in the package. If you want to explore the forces of ineptness, look just a bit lower down the food chain…"

K: in any chain of command, the leader is responsible for
those under him, a ship commander is responsible for his
crew actions for example, Bush is responsible because
he choose those underneath him. He is responsible for
their actions or inaction’s as the case may be, Katrina for
example. I disagree with you all in the fact, I do believe him
to be evil. I think chaney is a far greater evil, but bush
himself is evil. His very nonchalance at the deaths of
thousands because of his actions is the very essence of evil.
Because of his direct actions, a hundred thousand people
have died and all he seems to care about is
tax cuts for the rich, (welfare for the rich) and his
vacations (as he is the president with the most vacation
time taken in the history of the U.S. more then reagan with
over 2 years to go) bush is the very essence of evil.

Kropotkin

18

after we stage the war against iran and syria from iraq bush will be considered a military genius. look at a map sometime. who are we having problems with right now? look at the map… see afghanistan? see iraq? what is between them? bullseye.

-Imp

19

Imp - if that is the case - even if he bumbled unintentionally into it, and if it works, I will eat my words about Iraq. But he’s got two years and a full plate now. You have more faith than I in his geopolitical and military ability and acumen.

But stranger things have happened.

20

Impenitent: after we stage the war against iran and syria from iraq bush will be considered a military genius. look at a map sometime. who are we having problems with right now? look at the map… see Afghanistan? see iraq? what is between them? bullseye."

K: Militarily we are quite clearly overstretch as it is,
we couldn’t do jack during the last Hezbollah vs israel
war. Our military is on the verge of collapse just fighting Iraq,
how could we fight Iran at the same time? WE can’t.
It is that simple. So how do we fight when we are so
overstretch?

Kropotkin