Bush Cheerleads While the Economy Dives
I was extremely confused by Bush's rosy economic speech. Here my local bank, IndyMac, is collapsing, with distraught customers waiting in line for hours last week to get their money. Gas at my neighborhood pump has surged to nearly $5 a gallon, the price of oil plunging aside. California's unemployment rate just jumped to a new dispiriting high of nearly 7 percent. Then friends are losing their jobs because a real estate mogul is having his own billion-dollar cash meltdown and can't pay his debts. And well, why does a major American newspaper need all those journalists anyway?
And recently the New York Times reported that people worried about losing their homes are shopping for roommates so they can make the mortgage. Good thing we've got a full basement and I know a few college kids because the way things are going it just might come to that.
But Bush thinks we're all going to be OK. And the two-term president who didn't realize that gas hit 4 bucks a gallon long after most teenagers were begging their parents for more gas money must know what he's talking about. It's simply our attitude that's wrong.
Even as fed chairman Ben Bernake was working strenuously to avoid using the word "recession," Bush was telling Americans not to fret. We're only going through a "time of uncertainty," the president insisted. Those failing banks and mortgage lenders are actually a sign that the financial markets are "basically sound."
I wonder what it would take for Bush to admit the country's in crisis and to do something serious about it. Other than tell people to head over to the mall or to give us a pep talk. Which doesn't seem to have solved the foreclosure crisis or shored up the banks any. But then this would require Bush to interact with ordinary Americans a little. To see their pain.
Like the middle-aged woman in a pantsuit I saw in front of the pharmacy a few mornings ago. I had to pick up a prescription. (Which, speaking of skyrocketing consumer costs, would have cost $130 more if I didn't have such fabulous, high-priced health insurance.) She was sitting on the concrete leaning against a wall. She looked dazed, her hair was sticking out and her skin was red and splotchy -- the way people's faces are when they've been in the elements too long. She looked like someone's wife or mother who had fallen on hard times. I had never seen her before, but I'm seeing more and more people like her in my neighborhood.
She didn't look up when I walked by. She was too busy eating ravenously out of a pudding cup.
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In order to understand the Republican take on this issue, one must first put onesself in their shoes.
You have been taking money from rich lobbyists for decades so that the whole sub-prime bubble could get by federal regulators. You have gotten rich off of this scheme. So, what's not to like? The sharks get fatter, and the fish get eaten.
That's what cheerleaders do...stand on the sidelines and cheer, even if they don't really comprehend the "game" unfolding in front of them.
Since he can't run again (unlike his dad) his objective is to help keep as many Republicans in elected office as possible so he's going to lie.
Notice how they stick to the official definition of a recession. They do so because it is easy to manipulate GDP to show growth. All you have to do is jack up federal spending which they and the Fed are doing.
Does anybody even care what Bush has to say about anything?
Waste of time...
Of course he is cheerleading...he is making millions. Unless he has a skirt o with pom poms and pigtails, it's business as usual
"She looked dazed..."
Perhaps because she just found out that the health insurance she had as the widow of a salaried General Motors retiree (who put in who knows how many hours of unpaid, unheralded overtime for the company that promised him such a good retirement package for himself and his wife) is going to disappear next January.
At least the accounts at IndyMac are insured by the federal government for up to $100,000 per depositor.
Hey ! Why don't we stop complaining and go out and talk to our neighbor's and family members about electing a democrat (congress also) and end this stupid war, then we could spend that 10 billion a month on the american people, some one wrote a song once that said they got "money for war" but they can't feed the poor.
That would be the "poet" Tupac. He had that right. We have money for what we consider a priority, but not for anything that won't score polital points.
From Dubya's perspective, life is peachy.
His personal economy is essentially unharmed, democrats continue to let him off the hook for his crimes, he's cruising to retirement...
Actually, his personal economy, at that of his buddies, is not unharmed. It's soaring. It's almost the sum total of the US Treasury they got stuffed there in their pockets. It's what it's all been about all along.
The Head Cheerleader is completely out of touch. No news here.
If you really must blame someone then you should blame the Democrats!
The economy was good, unemployment was at its lowest, inflation was down and we were in a war sucking the life out of us and gas was more or less two dollars a gallon, now the Democrats are in control of Congress, remember them? they are the ones that make the laws and raise our taxes and most of all spend money they don't have, and now the economy has gone to crap, the inflation rate is out of control, unemployment is rising the war is getting better (it still needs to end) and gas has skyrocketed to four dollars a gallon plus and all of this happened AFTER the Democrats took control of Congress yet YOU still blame Bush.
Might I remind you that it is the Republicans who want to drill off the continental shelf and Alaska and it is the Democrats who oppose it.
And BTW it is the Democrats who want to raise the fuel tax another ten cents per gallon which will hurt the exact same people whom they claim they are trying to help and a year from now you and all of the Democrats will be trying to convince everyone else that it was Bush who screwed the poor one last time before leaving office.
What are you smoking? All this happened starting Sept. 12 2001! That was when the markets went berserk, that was when the Republican controlled congress and Karl Rove shoved the Patriot Act down our throats! This administration has done more harm to American interests at home and abroad than any three Democratic ones!
This administration is firmly looking out for the best interests of the wealthiest Americans, i.e., themselves. Tax cuts for the richest Americans? When there is a war to be paid for?
Your grand children will be paying for this war that your beloved Republican party rubber stamped their approval. It seems that the economy was doing well, unemployment was down and there was a surplus in the general fund BEFORE Bush took office.
Stop parroting this jingoistic BS and get your information straight!
Jeez, you kids ...
Clue: "According to an evaluation of data from the U.S. Department of Treasury, the cost of goods and services remained relatively consistent between 1635 and 1913, around a level of roughly 25 times the buying power of the U.S. dollar in 2006."
'All this happened' ... bwahahahahaha! 1913 - warmonger president, Woodrow Wilson, with funny money from the Fed, which he signed into law on Dec 23, 1913. And later said, "I have betrayed my counrlry."
FDR, who knew well in advance of the Pearl Harbor 'day of infany'. But the biggest hit to the American citizen was Nixon's trashing of the Bretton woods 1994 agreement -- severing the tie to the gold standard. Float the dollar, and it's been sinking ever since.
This whole scheme evolved long before you, or I, was ever born.
This is either sacasm or someone who has a serious problem with reality.
Yeah, blame the Democrats.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
I thought real hard trying to come up with an analogy... and this is like someone in January of 1945 saying about the calamitous state of the world at the time (instead of blaming Germany and Japan), "You know who's really at fault is the United States and Great Britain!"
All the Democrats have been TRYING to do since the Nov '06 elections is to make any kind of dent at all in the massive mess the Republicans are 110% responsible for.
I can't believe you forgot to blame Bill Clinton in that rant.
Geeze.
He smashed my dream and altered reality at the same time.
Watched Moyer last night and was horrified at his piece on middle American foreclosures showing whole neighborhoods devastated by foreclosures and job losses. Thousands of houses decaying and unkempt yards, boarded up windows and families living on the streets or in shelters, if lucky. He had a guest on, a Bill Grieder, I believe, who has written books and spoke about the "Usary" of the richest against the working class and how it has run rampant, secondary to deregulation of banking and lending practices by our politicians of both parties. Also read a horror story in my Sunday paper about people who are being destroyed by debt they never should have been encouraged to accrue and how lenders are now making their biggest profits on fees and penalties. So grateful to live in the Pac. NW where things are still decent and we only lost 2% of our equity, so far. Also am glad we got rid of all debt, except our fixed mortgage and never refi'ed or took out any of the large equity we've accrued, shop only thrift and discount and save, save save.
FOR MICHAEL W. HODGE' DETAILED ECONOMIC REPORT, A MUST, MUST, READ:
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/
Bush was a cheerleader at Yale. Unfortunately, he thinks the job of the president is to idly cheerlead and to reward his friends and little else. Statesman he is not. I am afraid it is safe to say at this point he is a clown.
The only thing that matters to Bush is Bush. If he's doing ok then all the rest of us are just slackers. Obama will be the same way. Now that we realize that both Democrats and Republicans in DC are criminals it makes a lot more sense.
To say that Obama will be the same as Bush is political and intellectual laziness and dishonesty. Just sayin' it like it is.
But then if your profile name is any indication, I suppose that's ok with you since you seem to be of the opinion that the united states (and by extension the entire world) is in fact, hopeless.
If that's your opinion, fine.
Pretty sad to have to live with that kind of burden on your shoulders though, it seems to me.
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