Tea Party Commemorative wallpaper

Tea Party Commemorative wallpaper

Some pictures and commentary here – Signs of the Times: Scenes from the 912 March. Many of them do look a little over wrought. Note the child used as a walking billboard. Didn’t Malkin and O’Reilly say that kids should be off limits in political debates. I guess its all relative.

Beck fan and 9/12 protest attendee explains why Obama will oppress ‘white America.’ and call for attacks on America. Domestic terrorism is the conservative movement’s favorite form of civil debate.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tx) has no clue who is who in the Obama administration, including officials she voted to confirm. Apparently she had a mind meld with Eric Cantor (R-VA).

Bush’s Economic Legacy: A Final Tally

During Bush’s eight years in office, real GDP grew by 2.0% per year. Over Clinton’s eight years, it grew 75% faster, 3.5% per year. The difference is so great that Clinton actually added more to the GDP in his eight years than Bush did in his, despite having started from a much lower number. Clinton 1: Bush 0.

[   ]…As with real GDP growth, the numbers differ greatly. Bush grew real disposable personal income by 19.6 % over his term. Clinton grew it more than 40% faster, by 28%. And this comparison is understated because the vast bulk of income growth under Bush went to the very wealthiest of income earners. Between 2000 and 2007 two thirds of all the growth in the entire economy went to the top 1%. If average incomes were considered, the difference in performance would be far more stark. Clinton 2: Bush 0.

[    ]…Bush’s record on employment was equally legendary, but for the opposite reason. Despite inheriting an economy that was one third larger than the one Clinton inherited, Bush created a mere 5 million new jobs, one fifth the number created by Clinton. It is the lowest percentage level of job growth ever recorded for any eight year period outside of the Great Depression. Clinton 3: Bush 0.

[   ]…When George Bush took office, he inherited Clinton’s unemployment number, 4%. When he left office, in January 2009, the unemployment rate stood at 7.2% and was skyrocketing. The economy was hemorrhaging 600,000 jobs per month. Today, unofficial unemployment stands at 9.7%, the second highest rate since the Great Depression. Clinton 4: Bush 0.

Among many Americans calling someone the Anti-Christ is the worse epitaph that one could possibly use. If Obama is the Anti-Christ based on eight months of struggling with the Bush legacy, then what does that make Bush. In a related post from the Atlantic, Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy

The Census’ final report card on Bush’s record presents an intriguing backdrop to today’s economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama’s combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush’s two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.

[  ]…The trends look the same when examining shares of the population that are poor or uninsured, rather than the absolute numbers in those groups. When Clinton left office in 2000 13.7 per cent of Americans were uninsured; when Bush left that number stood at 15.4 per cent. (Under Bush, the share of Americans who received health insurance through their employer declined every year of his presidency-from 64.2 per cent in 2000 to 58.5 per cent in 2008.)

When Clinton left the number of Americans in poverty stood at 11.3 per cent; when Bush left that had increased to 13.2 per cent. The poverty rate for children jumped from 16.2 per cent when Clinton left office to 19 per cent when Bush stepped down.