It must be really, really bad if the Repubs can't spin it...?

[kentuck]

The Republicans are very good at spinning. They can polish a turd and convince many folks that it is the Hope diamond. They can take an unemployed plumber named Joe and turn him into a national figure. But they cannot polish the shit storm called George W Bush.
=============================

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/10/ap-bush-legacy-grim-times_n_156800.html

AP: Bush Legacy -- Grim Times, Gloomy Nation

WASHINGTON — Wars. Recession. Bailouts. Debt. Gloom.

<snip>
This is his tenure: eight years bracketed by the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history and the worst economic collapse in three generations. In between came two wars, two Supreme Court appointments, a tough re-election, sinking popularity, big legislative wins and defeats, an ambitious effort to combat AIDS, a meltdown of the housing market, a diminishing U.S. reputation abroad, and more power invested in Dick Cheney than any vice president in history.

<snip>
By any standard, the economy is in atrocious shape. More than 11 million people are out of work. The unemployment rate is at a 16-year high. The Dow Jones industrial average fell by 33.8 percent in 2008, the worst decline since 1931. One in 10 U.S. homeowners is delinquent on mortgage payments or in foreclosure.

People are losing their college savings, their nest eggs, their dreams.

The country is at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more broadly, against a threat of terrorism that predates Bush and still lurks from countless corners.

The Iraq conflict finally has an end in sight, but has cost much more in lives, time and money than even Bush expected.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government keeps spending money it doesn't have. The current budget deficit stands at a record $455 billion. That hole will get deeper _ probably more than a staggering $1 trillion _ as the bill grows for bailouts and efforts to jack up the economy.

And then there is the dismal public mood.

Huge numbers of people think the country is on the wrong track. Bush has had a negative approval rating for 47 months, the longest streak since such polling began. Almost two-thirds of people polled by the Pew Research Center said Bush's administration will be remembered for its failures.

"Nothing's going right," said Thomas Whalen, a professor of politics at Boston University who has written a book about presidential courage. "He was handed a country that was in pretty good shape. How you can argue that he's left the country in better shape?"

<snip>
Said Bush this summer: "I'll be dead when they finally figure it out."

<snip>
Just when it appeared Bush might be heading for a quiet exit, the final year of his presidency was overtaken by the agonizing economic crash.

The housing market collapsed. Credit froze. Financial giants crumbled. Layoffs mounted. Bailouts kept coming, including an astounding $700 billion plan.

Bush gets some blame for the giant mess. He was not just the leader at the time, but one who promoted a get-out-of-the-way philosophy of regulation during a period when mortgage-lending standards grew lax. Yet he also got resistance from Congress when he pushed for greater oversight of the housing industry.

Bush is quick to mention that other people, many on Wall Street, share responsibility for the economic crisis. Regardless, it caps his tenure.

His main point is that when he saw trouble, he acted decisively.

"I've been a wartime president," he said. "I've dealt with two economic recessions now. I've had, you know, a lot of serious challenges. What matters to me is that I did not compromise my soul to be a popular guy."

So let history judge, Bush says.

The country already has.

...more

[4 t 4]

1. He is a direct cause of so much of it

he will never get it. If he was evaluated by a team of psychiatrists and psychologist I would love to know the results, seriously!

[roguevalley]

9. the longer his era is scrutinized, the worse he will become in the eyes of

history. it won't let him off the hook, not now and not later, the deluded criminal.

[gratuitous]

11. Just wait until we have more information

The stuff we know about is bad enough. There's a shitload of stuff that we merely suspect has happened, or that hasn't been confirmed.

[kentuck]

12. I hope we can find out the truth.

George W Bush's legacy depends on it. The very survival of the Republican Party depends on it. But they depend on concealing it and stealing it away from the American people, so that the truth can never be known.

Of course, it may turn out to be a much bigger job than they planned for. Remember "Mission Accomplished"?

[yellerpup]

2. It IS really bad.

We have to hold Bush down and make him own it. Good post. K&R! :kick:

[givemebackmycountry]

3. "I've dealt with two economic recessions now. I've had, you know, a lot of serious challenges.

Yeah, Monkey so have we.

Except that's ONE recession.
The second one you guys like to talk about is nothing but a right wing talking point.
You were handed a surplus, and the first thing you did was give it all away to your friends.

Said Bush this summer: "I'll be dead when they finally figure it out."

Gee, Monkey do you think that you can pencil that in sometime soon?
Maybe as a result of your war crimes tribunal.

Now that would be progress.

(edited because I'm watching the football game)

[JohnyCanuck]

4. "How the Bush Administration Protected Predatory Lending and Let the Financial Crisis Grow"

Snip below is from an article Martial Law, the Financial Bailout, and War by Peter Dale Scott

Let us now consider the financial crisis and the panic bailout. No one should think that the crisis was unforeseen. Back in February Eliot Spitzer, in one of his last acts as governor of New York, warned about the impending crisis created by predatory lending, and reveled that the Bush Administration was blocking state efforts to deal with it. His extraordinary warning, in the Washington Post, is worth quoting at some length:

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. ...

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers. . . . Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices. . . .Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.21

Eliot Spitzer submitted his Op Ed to the Washington Post on February 13. If it had an impact, it was not the one Spitzer had hoped for. On March 10 the New York Times broke the story of Spitzer's encounter with a prostitute. According to a later Times story, "on Feb. 13 federal agents staked out his hotel in Washington."22

It is remarkable that the Mainstream Media found Spitzer's private life to be big news, but not his charges that Paulson's Treasury was prolonging the financial crisis, or the relation of these charges to Spitzer's exposure.

SNIP

What are we to make of Spitzer's charge that the Bush administration interfered to preempt state laws against predatory lending, and of the fact that the mainstream media did not report that? A petty motive for the OCC's behavior in 2003 might have been to allow the housing bubble to continue through 2003 and 2004, thus facilitating Bush's re-election. But the persistence of Treasury obstruction thereafter, despite the unanimous opposition of all fifty states, and the continuing silence of the media about this disagreement, suggest that some broader policy intention may have been at stake.

One is struck by the similarities with the Savings and Loan scandal which was allowed to continue through the Reagan 1980s, long after it became apparent that deliberate bankruptcy was being used by unscrupulous profiteers to amass illegal fortunes at what was ultimately public expense.25

[zbdent]

5. they've stopped trying to polish the turd ... now they're molding it and firing it in a kiln to

be presented as "caused by Obama"

[DemoTex]

6. All of our problems derive from the top-secret Bu$h/Cheney energy plan.

Think about it. March 2001. Fucking bastards.

[stubtoe]

7. The forgot Katrina, torture, extraordinary rendition, shredding of the Constitution ...

not to mention, whatever about Jeff Gannon? You know, the muscular hunk who signed in as a White House guest some hundreds of times - without a sign out?

[valerief]

8. You know what I hope goes away during the Obama administration?

The phrases "the right track" and "the wrong track." I can't read a piece when I see either phrases wedged in there.

(And, of course, I hope all the truly horrible stuff goes away, but I don't expect miracles.)

[DeepModem Mom]

10. K&R