It is worth considering why this happened. It may be more to do with George W Bush’s ‘cured’ alcoholism than anything else. Drunks who find Christ and big answers, stop beating their wives and sob their way through hourly prayers often think, like W, that anything is possible, miracles happen, and the laws of cause and effect are suspended because they want them to be.
Thus it was that Bush began two wars, and brought down taxes and refused to pay for the wars, and thereby consumed a big surplus imagining a miracle would save him and found himself, to his surprise, in bankrupting recession. How could this be? He had felt so good after going off the grog and God, surely…God, surely…would provide.
He has pulled off the unusual double of destroying America and ending the world. He also gave back the guns to young murderers, empowering the Newtown massacre, and no-one even mentions his name any more, let alone invites him, like John McCain, to commentate on Fox News. He is the President Who Dare Not Speak His Name now, like a crazy uncle who did time for child-molesting unwelcome at Christmas dinners who turns up nonetheless in a white beard, in search of a feed.
If capitalism falls, and it may not, he will be the cause of it. Nobody did so much, with so little excuse, and so much borrowed money, to bring this about. Nobody ever denied so much, or turned his face so resolutely against reality, as this pious lush. He giggled his way through Shock and Awe. He invaded, with twenty-eight Christian countries, and not one Muslim one, the Arab world and was surprised he wasn’t welcome there. He gave hundreds of billions to the banks that paupered the world economy and was surprised this didn’t help. He ignored the warming of the seas because Christ was coming back soon and ended the worthwhile experiment of human life on earth.
What a stupid prattling murderous incompetent arsehole he’s been, and how awful it was when Murdoch cheated him into power.
And so it goes.
Name:
Well, if were going to talk debt, let’s look at the record of the big spenders. Ronald Reagan racked up $1.4 Trillion over two terms. He was succeeded by George H Bush who beat that record with $1.03 Trillion in only one term and kicked Saddam’s arse but didn’t go the full hog.
Then later George W Bush came along (the son) and said, “Anything dad can do, I can do better.” And he did go the full hog. Never underestimate a son’s determination to get one over his old man. George W Bush spent $3.294 Trillion over two terms. Not a bad effort. The war on Terror has a high price. Then he made all those tax cuts…
Bob is right to a point.
Now it gets interesting, and Bob should tell you the whole story because now we have this golden haired boy Obama and boy, can this guy spend dollars! In four years this guy has racked up $5.073 Trillion in spending. And he’s not finished yet, not by a long shot. If they can raise the debt ceiling this guy will go into the 2016 Guiness book of records with another $6 trillion in debt on top of the $5 trillion. Yet, all you guys here love this bloke and turn a blind eye to his antics…How on Earth did a Chicago community organizer get to run the most powerful country on the planet? I’d have him flipping burgers at McDonalds.
I’m sorry to say this but you, too, are risking a ban for life.
You know perfectly well it was a debt left him by Bush and a debt increased by the Republicans, in the last two years, refusing him the tax money to lower it.
These are such big lies. They really are.
And you are banned for a month.
Happy new year.
Flipping hamburgers, you say.
Wow.
Let’s make that two months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png
The facts tend not to lie.
Interestingly, the percentage of debt to GDP is now at World War II levels.
Also interesting is that debt took off about 1980 (Reagan became President 1980) and kept heading up, regardless of who [pretends to] run the show.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
To Act Rationally:
See above. For your part in this Big Lie — that Obama started with a surplus and spent five trillion — you too are banned for two months.
Fuck you.
You do not tell lies in these columns.
You do not tell lies.
Let me get this straight - I posted a link to the U.S. debt and debt to GDP ratio, mentioning that facts tend not to lie, and I get banned. Awesome. Bob Ellis doesn’t care about fact. You read it here folks.
Okay, that’s fine.
Banned for life.
You know well that I dislike the unfair.
Go well, you fucking liar, elsewhere.
The USA total federal debt was 34.7 per cent when Bill Clinton was President. This year, it is 74.2 per cent of GDP, nearly all of it caused by Bush and his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and still rising. The only time it has been higher in US history was in the latter stages of World War II. Since 1945 the USA stock market has average a 15% return under Democratic government but only 10% under The Republicans. The five former Democratic Presidents (Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Harry S. Truman) all REDUCED public debt as a share of GDP, while the last four Republican Presidents (George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford) all oversaw an INCREASE in the country’s indebtedness. Exit polls demonstrated that, 4 years after G.W. Bush left the scene, 53% of voters still held him responsible for the debt, with only 38% blaming the current President. The exit polls also showed that “taxes” and “the deficit”, much harped on by Republicans - especially Tea Party ones - were largely irrelevant for the vast majority of voters at the 21012 election.
History won’t be kind to Bush junior. Bob’s article sums it up quite well; but the difficulty is that there are still many in USA who believe just as Bush did.
And there are even some in Australia who think he was somewhere close to being on the right track.
They really do need a Second Coming if they get their way on the economy and foreign policy.
Not quite rags to rags in three generations, but Bush the younger played his role well in that well-honed set-piece of human affairs.
History oughtn’t be kind to him, nor his father - both of them with their sneering patrician superiority masking their contempt for the rule of law and common good for all, hiding behind the thin veneer of probity while at the same time cutting deals with all the gusto and ruthlessness of Chicago gangsters bent on enriching themselves and blind to the casualties they caused.