It’s going to be fun watching serial liars like Ari Fleischer attempt to commit media flub jobs on the legacy of George W. Bush, one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had in the entire history of the country. These people, who left America broken and bloodied and lying in a ditch want us to say thanks for the failure.
The gall.
I like when Ari has goes to the old reliable Saddam-was-behind-9/11 claim. He wasn’t serious, right? Please tell me he was just making sure that everyone knew he was bullshitting.
Ari used to be a much better bullshitter than that. He’s really lost his fastball.
They are hoping for a Trumanization.
I do not think they will be getting it.
((OT – OW, still no link to page two at the bottom))
Whatever happened to “No comment?”
((OT – OW, still no link to page two at the bottom))
So I’m not the only one with that problem.
Man, you have to see the whole “interview” on Tweedy’s show to really get a feel for what a joke Fleischer is.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29642334#29642334
Truly sad but expected.
I quibble with the expression “one of the worst presidents.” Give Dubya the prize, I say. Name another who abrogated habeas corpus and set himself up as a TYRANT. He could legally detain ANY of us without trial, indefinitely, with the presumption that he could TORTURE us. What other president could compete with that?
Great president or greatest president?
I am not a big fan of George Bush. I did not vote for him either time and yes it is true he made some mistakes during his two terms. However, he did not ask for 9/11. George Bush did not ask to be put in the position of putting his popularity and legacy on the chopping block. He made the decision to do what was necessary to ensure the safety of the American People. He did not make this decision based on what the liberals around the world would think because that was not his concern. His concern was to ensure that another terrorist attack would not take place on U.S. soil. And he made the decision based upon what his generals and military advisors told him. War is no pretty, war is not perfect, and war is waged by men so war is not without mistake. Weather you agree with the war effort or not, waging war in the Middle East has kept the terrorists on the run and has kept America safe.
It is simple, no 9/11 no war. Had we not been attacked than the Bush Presidency would not have been over shadowed by an unpopular war. No war and we may have paid attention to the fact that the U.S. economy grew by leaps and bounds between 2000 and 2006. Even though he inherited a small recession from the Clinton tax increases of the late 90’s, even though 911 happened, even when the U.S. airline industry was on the brink of bankruptcy, and even when gas prices reached record levels, our economy boomed like never before. WHY????? Because George W. Bush steered the country toward capitalism by cutting taxes and allowing the free market to run with less government intrusion.
The current “economic crisis” is not the result of the wars in the Middle East, it is not the result of low taxes, it is not the effect of fewer government regulations on Wall Street. The current downturn in the United States economy which has led to the downturn of the global economy is a result of 30 years of bad policy. This bad policy, enacted by the Jimmy Carter administration and doubled down on by the Clinton Administration, is known as the community reinvestment act of 1976.
The Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions.[5]
This law has required banks to make loans to people who do not have the credit history or means to pay back their loan. In the name of fairness, and extending a hand to the poor in this country, the democrats have forced banks to make bad loans for the past 30 years. The Clinton Administration created Fanny May, and Freddie Mack, in 1995 to buy up these “sub-prime mortgages.” Once Freddie and Fanny started buying bad loans from banks the incentive to qualify loan applicants disappeared. Your income, net worth, and credit history became even less important factors in loan approval than it had been after 1976. So for the past 13 years banks have approved loans to just about anyone who wanted one. The logic being; Freddie and Fanny will buy the loan from us so who cares if the person pays it back? Meanwhile Freddie and Fanny were making money hand over fist dividing these loans and selling off the risk to other banks. Most big banks got into the same game as Freddie and Fanny and bought up this risk. In the beginning, even when the people defaulted on their loans the banks still made money because the value of houses continued to go up in every state. You buy a house for $200,000 one year and default one your loan the next year, the bank reposes the house and resells it for $250,000. So weather you paid back your loan or not the banks still makes money. It was a good time to be in the banking industry.
Unfortunately, the housing bubble burst. More and more people began to default on their loans therefore the supply of houses for sale in the market kept going up. Banks, understanding the basics of economics, saw that an increased supply was going to lead to lower prices. As long as the prices of houses kept going up the banks were happy to loan money to anyone. All of a sudden banks were not certain that home values would continue to rise so they started making fewer loans. Now there was not only a larger supply of houses for sale but there was less demand for them because fewer people could get approved for loans. And…suddenly there is panic. The hundreds of thousands to millions of “sub prime mortgages” that were written, sold, repackaged, and resold were valueless. The bank loaned you $300,000 to buy a house. Your house is now only worth $200,000 so you just stop paying, move out, and let the bank who paid $300,000 for your house have it back. The bank just lost $100,000 on one deal. Multiply that by millions of deals, compound that with the money lost by insuring the risk on these loans and you can see a glimpse of what happened to our economy. And this is just the beginning. We are in a downward spiral. More and more and more houses go back on the market each day, banks have less and less and less money to lend to potential home buyers and the banks that have insured these bad loans have no money to pay.
George Bush’s war on terror, his tax cuts, his conservative values and dedication to capitalism did not cause this economy. The democrat’s intrusion into our free market via over regulating our banking system did.
Brent: Everything you said is wrong. KTHXBI
Shorter Brent: Those goddam blacks and poor people ruined it for everybody!
I am not a big fan of George Bush. I did not vote for him either time
Why aren’t you a big fan of George Bush, Jr.? Why did you not vote for him? For whom did you vote? After reading your lengthy post about Mr. Bush, one is curious.
yes it is true he made some mistakes during his two terms
Also, what would you say were Mr. Bush’s biggest mistakes during his two terms?
Well that was a big pile of nothing. I hope you didn’t spend a lot of time on that, Brent. I bet the weather’s nice outside.
I take that back. You obviously didn’t spend much time, considering your entire CRA paragraph is copied-and-pasted from the wikipedia article on the CRA.
9/11 happened under Bush’s watch. What did he do in response? He _promoted_ Condoleezz Rice.
Bad on security, bad (really fucking bad) on the economy, bad on foreign policy.
Hell, at least there were enough wing-nuts to resuscitate Reagan. Today, they don’t even want to mention Bush II’s name.
But it’s Rush’s party. He’ll decide how they handle this one.
Lincoln, Grant, Roosevelt, and Truman all suspended habeas corpus for some people during their administrations. I guess Roosevelt would actually be the closest to Bush in terms of tyranny since he did detain 80,000 legal American residents, including citizens, based on nothing but their heritage. He also authorized a war against a country who had never attacked America. Of course, Truman did kill a quarter million Japanese civilians when he made America the only nation to use atomic weapons against another country.
He also authorized a war against a country who had never attacked America.
To be totally honest, as a condition of their treaty with Japan, Germany HAD declared war on the United States before Roosevelt, in your words, “…authorized a war against a country who had never attacked America.”
Don’t you consider Germany’s declaration of war on a country that had not attacked THEM a hostile act worthy of a military response?
Yup. And given that war with the United States and Germany was inevitable if Germany was able to defeat Britain it’s very good for those who came later that Germany did declare war when they did. I also don’t think that Roosevelt was a tyrant, that Lincoln was right to suspend habeas corpus in Maryland, and that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved American lives and likely prevented more Japanese deaths than an invasion of the mainland would have caused. I’d just prefer a little more historical perspective from people who are prone to squeal about how Bush is Teh Worstest Prezidint Evah!
But bringing up names like FDR, Lincoln, and Truman only highlights what a terrible president Bush II was. Worst president ever? That would probably be Hoover. But Bush II is definitely up there. Harding/Coolidge territory.
And sure, Truman left office highly unpopular. But he also presided over the end of WWII and the beginning of a huge US economic expansion. Chimpy McFlightsuit? He started two wars and couldn’t win either, let alone resolve them (Eisenhower didn’t “win” in Korea, but he did a reasonable job of holding North Korea in check). He failed to to prevent 9/11. He failed to capture or kill bin Laden. And the economy is completely in the shitter.