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Bush Did It! Bush Didn't Do It!
Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers ^ | 6/13/2011 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 06/15/2011 5:35:22 AM PDT by JudyM

During the 2008 campaign Barack Obama ran more against lame-duck President Bush than against his Republican opponent, John McCain. The campaign is now long over, and yet President Obama still seems haunted by the ghost of his predecessor. Last week, for example, he was railing at the Bush phantom, whom he blamed for his received economic mess. In the world of Barack Obama everything he inherited was someone else’s fault — unless he believes past policies offer him some advantage and thus are to be claimed as entirely his own. The stock market is sliding. Gas and food prices are soaring. The housing market is as bad as it has been for the last three years. Unemployment is back over 9 percent. Economic growth is anemic. The national debt has risen $5 trillion in just three years. This year’s $1.6 trillion budget deficit is not stimulating anything but uncertainty and despair. Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable at present rates of payouts. Record numbers of Americans draw food stamps and unemployment insurance. An unpopular Obamacare has not even been implemented yet, and the administration has already granted 1,400 exemptions from it. In other words, much as Jimmy Carter took the hard times of 1975–76 and turned them into the mess of high interest, high inflation, high unemployment, and high gas prices — while blaming the American people for their malaise — so too Barack Obama has made almost everything worse and is getting angrier at other people and events (the European meltdown, the Japanese tsunami, the Middle Eastern unrest) in the process. The administration’s massive borrowing, new regulations, promised higher taxes, opposition to new oil leases and pipelines, takeovers (from GM and Chrysler to healthcare),

(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blame; bush43; bushlegacy; bushsfault; failedpolicies; obama; obamasfecaltouch; vdh
If only big media where as insightful and honest as Dr. Hanson.............
1 posted on 06/15/2011 5:35:25 AM PDT by JudyM
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To: JudyM
ATM’s, grocery scanners, EZ-Pass lanes, airport kiosks, the internets, Walmart, Halliburton... All responsible for high unemployment!
2 posted on 06/15/2011 5:43:01 AM PDT by petercooper (2012 - Purge the RINO's.)
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To: JudyM; Deb
It is almost as if Obama on some days claims, “Bush did it,” while on others insisting, “Bush didn’t do it.”

... he makes it clear that a President Obama would have absolutely no patience with someone like a griping Senator Obama.

VDH bump! Dr. Hanson eviscerates the boy who would be king.


3 posted on 06/15/2011 5:44:21 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free!)
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To: JudyM

Tell me what Bush “did”. It can’t be failure to regulate, because Bush tried to rein in Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac and Barney Frank and the other dems wouldn’t hear of it.

George Bush didnt do a damn thing to “cause” a recession, and BHO has done plenty to prolong and worsen it.


4 posted on 06/15/2011 5:45:28 AM PDT by Williams (Honey Badger Don't Care)
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To: All

Obama’s Deficit Avalanche isn’t Bush’s Fault scottuystarnes.com / 2/9/2010

Washington Times reports: Even more staggering than the mountains of snow in the capital are the deficits the Obama administration plans for the next decade. Huge spending increases will add about $12 trillion to the national debt for budget years 2009 to 2020. The scariest part is that these deficits are based on unrealistic budgeting assumptions; the real fiscal outlook is much bleaker. In the proposed 2011 budget, the White House defensively attacks the “irresponsibility of past” deficits.

For example, the 2009 budget deficit of $1.4 trillion is blamed on the George W. Bush administration as if President Obama’s $862 billion stimulus package and more than $400 billion supplemental spending bill had nothing to do with it. Mr. Obama’s planned 2010 budget deficit rises to an even higher record level of $1.6 trillion.

By comparison, all of Mr. Bush’s deficits from 2002 to 2008 – the seven years during which his team had the most control over the budget – produced a combined deficit of $2.1 trillion. Obama has spent more in 2 years than Bush did in 7 years. Obama’s BIOB (Blame it on Bush) defense just won’t work anymore.


5 posted on 06/15/2011 5:49:07 AM PDT by Liz ( A taxpayer voting for Obama is like a chicken voting for Col Sanders.)
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To: JudyM

A lot of this is similar to Rush’s first hour on Tuesday (I listened to the podcast this morning on the way in).


6 posted on 06/15/2011 5:49:59 AM PDT by kevinm13 (Tim Geithner is a tax cheat. Manmade "Global Warming" is a HOAX!)
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To: Williams

>>Tell me what Bush “did”. It can’t be failure to regulate, because Bush tried to rein in Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac and Barney Frank and the other dems wouldn’t hear of it.<<

The MSM and of course barry the zero keep getting one fundamental thing wrong, irrespective of who started the recession (and it WAS as you say).

barry didn’t “inherit” anything. He VOLUNTEERED for it!


7 posted on 06/15/2011 5:53:09 AM PDT by freedumb2003 (Herman Cain 2012)
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To: petercooper

I have this image of obama walking by an ATM machne and cursing at it. LMAO!


8 posted on 06/15/2011 5:54:59 AM PDT by GlockThe Vote (F U B O ! ! !)
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To: LadyPilgrim

Ping for later.


9 posted on 06/15/2011 5:57:01 AM PDT by LadyPilgrim ((Lifted up was He to die; It is finished was His cry; Hallelujah what a Savior!!!!!! ))
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To: JudyM

And many Democrats still buy thism, or claim it, that the mess that Obama inherited will take him 8 years to fix with more taxes and spending. At the same time they are unahppy that he didnt do enough of it, but will still vote for him anyway.


10 posted on 06/15/2011 5:59:46 AM PDT by sickoflibs (If you pay zero Federal income taxes, don't say you are paying your 'fair share')
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To: Williams

My belief is that the financial meltdown of 2008, if not caused outright by DemocRAT interests on Wall Street, was certainly nudged along by them to help secure a win by Obama (adjusting tin-foil hat).

Now, like Dr. Frankenstein having lost control of the monster he created, they can only watch helplessly as the boy who would be President (who never held a real job and couldn’t run a lemonade stand for profit) flails around and blames everyone else.


11 posted on 06/15/2011 6:02:44 AM PDT by Arm_Bears (I'll have what the gentleman on the floor is drinking.)
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To: JudyM

“...history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.”

Friedrich August von Hayek


12 posted on 06/15/2011 6:08:55 AM PDT by SMARTY ("When you blame others, you give up your power to change." Robert Anthony)
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To: Williams
Tell me what Bush “did”

Bush increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, including LBJ.
Bush never cut a single government program and instead created new hundred billion dollar socialist programs like a Medicare drug entitle­ment and No Child Left Behind federal control of education
Bush initiated the multi-trillion dollar transfer of wealth from the US taxpayers to Wall St. and European Banksters.
Bush did nothing to stop the tsunami of legal and illegal Third World immigration into the country
Bush did nothing to stop the outsourcing of American jobs to Red China, India, and other Third World pits.
Bush did nothing to stop the direct transfer of American manufacturing and heavy industry to Red China.
Bush launched a series of endless wars in the Middle East that we are going to be paying for in blood and treasure far into the future.
Bush did nothing to make America energy independent.

That's all I could think of off the top of my head.

13 posted on 06/15/2011 6:52:10 AM PDT by Roninf5-1 (If ignorance is bliss why are so many Americans on anti-depressants?)
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To: Liz

Bookmark


14 posted on 06/15/2011 6:53:51 AM PDT by corlorde (New Hampshire)
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To: JudyM
In this country we are teaching black people that nothing is their fault. Welfare, drug use, crime, illegitimacy, are all the fault of the White Man. Affirmative action programs aggravate this problem when blacks are told that it's Whitey's fault that they need 'help' to get jobs and college placement.

It's always someone else's fault, they learn never to take responsibility for their actions. In this environment we have Barack Obama, who will continue to blame others for his own mistakes for eternity.

15 posted on 06/15/2011 7:33:28 AM PDT by sportutegrl
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To: Roninf5-1

While I believe you overstated several items, I do not take issue with the substance. Bush, with control of both houses of Congress, had the opportunity to shrink government and limit its role and he did not. He overspent which allowed the Dems to come back into power. Having said that, he was a spending/government midget compared to the giant spender/government-grower that is Obama. He took bad and made it worse than most of us could have imagined.


16 posted on 06/15/2011 7:56:14 AM PDT by JudyM
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To: Roninf5-1; Deb
That's all I could think of off the top of my head.

Allow me to help you then. President George W. Bush saved the country from Presidents Gore and Kerry ...

was the world leader in taking the fight to the Muslim Jihadists who attacked us on 9/11 ...

and who genuinely cared deeply about America and every one of its citizens (and especially its most vulnerable citizens).


17 posted on 06/15/2011 11:41:46 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free!)
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To: Williams
George Bush didnt do a damn thing to “cause” a recession, and BHO has done plenty to prolong and worsen it.

The whole financial meltdown was engineered over time by the Democrats. The trigger was pulled in the early morning hours of September 26, 2008, when someone began withdrawing large amounts of cash from money market accounts. The amount was so large that Bush was advised to close the banks. I haven't heard who that was, if it was revealed, but it sure sounds like the Soros MO.

The housing crash was also engineered over time by the Democrats and triggered just before the election.

The Democrats and the media spent eight years blasting everything Bush did, many of which they also are now doing to great praise. Bush was so demonized that any Democrat could have won, even a nothing like Obama. While blasting Bush they simultaneously refused to do any vetting of Obama. Once he was nominated it then became "An Historic Election" and to not elected him was racist. McCain didn't have a chance. The media elected Obama and they will continue to try.

18 posted on 06/15/2011 12:06:53 PM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot (I retain the right to be inconsistent, contradictory and even flat-out wrong!)
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