Dubya – More Than Just A Portrait (Repost) from The Last Refuge

I was not a huge fan of George W. Bush.

That said, I do not think America would not have survived as we did had he not been the POTUS when 9/11 came down upon our beloved Republic.

George W. has been trampled, vilified, threatened, killed in effigy by the left how many times and yet this is a man who rode TALL in the saddle when our nation needed strong leadership. Something Obama and his regime have yet to do as they are content to lead from behind and destroy America from within, with a lot of outside help from progressives, haters of the Untied States from all around the globe. Let us leave that topic alone for tonight.

I know all about the 9/11 conspiracy theories and am leaving them in the dumpster where they belong for now. Perhaps another day and time, but not now.

Sundance, from The Last Refuge has an EXCELLENT article/re-post up about the state of the Republic and how we prospered when the Conservatives were in power until 2007. He has done a master's work on comparing the Bush years to where we sadly, are now. On the cusp of becoming a second world country in so many ways and we can thank progressive liberalism, Obama and his ilk for such a fast and steep decline of our Republic.

The facts, graphs, and numbers speak for themselves and I challenge you to tear this post apart. This country REALLY went down the toilet after 2007.

I also want to remind all of you how many Islamic, Jihadist attacks we have now suffered from under the Obama regime, Five deadly Jihadist attacks. Obama has weakened this country in every way possible and Boston is just the warm up. Things are now in motion that will lead to martial law and many, many Americans will probably pay with the steepest and most precious cost of all, their lives. I PRAY that I am wrong.

Under George W. Bush one, 9/11.

I will shut up now and this is one of two, maybe three superb posts for tonight. PatriotUSA

From The Last Refuge. A great site. Sort of like this one?


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Dubya – More Than Just A Portrait (Repost)

By Sundance

 

- Today seems a fitting day to review this again -

One of the frustrating realities of our polarized time is the media creating a skewed and left leaning view of all things political. However, even with this headwind, each day many more people choose to engage in and honest discovery and understanding of what’s going on. Whether because they stumble upon a concern, or whether they happen across some information that makes them rethink their prior position and views, it can lead to an engagement with us from a perspective of their only reality view having been determined by the lens of the media.
Indeed that can be, and often is, an incredibly frustrating conversation because they bring an embedded and sometimes flawed bias into their narrative. One of the more common misunderstandings stems from the media hatred of George W Bush and his actions, aptly called Bush Derangement Syndrome (BSD).

What I want to do here is not change anyone’s mind, but rather to remind people what led to some of Dubya’s decisions in his own words.

I must first emphasize at the time of Dubya’s tenure in the White House I was not a supporter of many “Bush policies”, however, I did understand his reasoning.

Sometimes research into “why” was needed to understand this reasoning, but there were valid reasons nonetheless. It is unfair for the liberal media, or for any Johnny-come-lately to re-write his motivation as illicit, it was not. In hindsight some of his policies and approaches may have been wrong, but it generally is unfair to look in the rear view mirror to judge. Again, at times it is important to stop the conversation, pause, and remind ourselves what was going on at the time.


When Dubya took office the economic country was moving along steadily, indeed Dubya was less focused on fiscal matters and more focused on educational and social issues. The primary plank of his candidacy was education. People were working, things were quiet, and the country was steadily moving forward with little attention to outside the U.S. influences. However, all that changed immediately on 9/11/2001.
EVERYTHING CHANGED.

E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

When the terrorist planes hit the WTC, the Pentagon, and the failed Capitol Building attempt which ended in a farm field in Pennsylvania, every American stood in shock. Everything changed, immediately.

Again, I’m not defending Bush. Bush was not adverse to government spending. From a fiscal perspective Dubya guy pissed me off more than most, but I accept the fact that everything in his world also changed after 9/11 especially with the economy. What many people fail to remember is our economy came to an abrupt halt on 9/11. Not only was our collective conscience shocked and we felt suddenly vulnerable to attack, but the very core of our society was attacked. Our economy literally came to a grinding and immediate thundershock of a stop.



The images of people jumping out of burning buildings as the “best option” left impressions of their bodies exploding on the sidewalks of our psyche. Not only did it scare the crap out of us, it also caused us to retract into an almost economic coma.
The Stock Market closed. For weeks and then months people stayed away from purchasing anything, businesses were immediately in trouble. People didn’t buy stuff. Cars were not selling, shops were empty, massive economic activity just stopped as suddenly as the planes hitting the World Trade Center Towers. In addition to the risk from terrorism, Bush was also facing an immediate, check that, an instantaneous economic recession.



People blasted George W. Bush for a news conference when he asked Americans to start buying again, but what they didn’t give him credit for was knowing how substantive this drop in economic activity was. Our economy was immediately in dire straits. He was trying to put people’s minds at ease on the terror threat, while simultaneously needing to get people economically moving again. That was the background for his speech when he said “the terrorists will not win”, he was not just talking about hunting them down and killing them, he was talking about they will not be allowed to destroy our economy.



Do you remember the $600 per person tax rebate check he quickly dispatched to every man, woman and child in our country. This was one of the measures he took to combat an economic downturn facilitated by the terror attacks on 9/11. He was trying to wake up our economy from the fear those Muslim Jihadists put us into. In addition he took steps to lower the tax rates, which are infamously now called the “Bush Tax Cuts”.

It is unfair, heck it is beyond unfair, to ignore the context of his decision. It was not just some arbitrary determination along the lines of ‘gee I think Americans pay too much in taxes, and I want to create a deficit’. That type of claim is just a total disconnect to the reality behind the decision. He was trying to save us from the result of the economic terrorism which followed the attacks.

And guess what? It worked…. It frigging’ worked. Yes, his approach however you feel about the tax rate cuts, the tax rebate checks, and the subsequent economic growth worked. That context is fair and appropriate whether or not you think the decision was correct, the reality of the context still exists. I’m really am quite sick and tired of watching progressive liberals re-write history without this context in place.

Besides, their charge that the Bush Tax Cuts reduced tax revenue is fundamentally flawed. Actually, it is an outright lie. Take a look at “Revenues” or how much money has come into, or been withheld from the Government because of Bush’s Tax rates. The Bush Tax Cuts (“Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003“) were signed into law on May 28, 2003, just months before the start of the 2004 fiscal year. The results — in terms of real revenue to the U.S. government — were stunning.



According to the OMB’s own figures, the Bush tax cuts resulted in an explosion of revenue to the U.S. government. Get that? The governments own non-partisan accounting office state unequivocally the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 brought more revenue into the treasury (look at chart). That’s not to say Bush wasn’t a profligate spender, he was; and that is where a lot of fiscal conservatives became extremely angry with Dubya. But in virtually no cases were Democrats arguing that he spend less (unless you count national security).

In fact, it was fiscal conservatives who opposed Bush’s absurd policies on spending, amnesty and the expansion of a Medicare prescription program not liberal Democrats.
Additionally, lets just pause a moment and focus on the economics of the situation in November 2006 the date the Democrats won majorities and took over congress.



The day the democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009 it was actually January 3rd 2007 the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, the start of the 110th Congress. The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.

For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is “Bush’s Fault”, think about this. January 3rd, 2007 was the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress:

• The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77
• The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%
• The Unemployment rate was 4..6%
• George Bush’s Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION. Despite the extreme economic contraction that happened as a consequence of 9/11/01 his response to it was successful.

Remember the day, January 3rd, 2007 was also the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee. The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy? BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES !

Democrats dumped 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOS! (By the way: Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie – starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy). And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac ? Senator Barack Obama. And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie ? Senator Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress.

Look, I ain’t here to defend Bush, that is not the reason for this thread. But these are facts that seem to become mysteriously lost in the context. Now let’s look at it a different way:
The Media continues to babble on about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough a lot of people swallow this nonsense. So once more, a short civics lesson. Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 was the Democrat Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush belatedly got tough on spending increases.
For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets. And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. Let’s remember what the deficits looked like during that period:


If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.



In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 2009.

It is appropriate to keep facts in the conversation when engaging with progressives, liberals, and even moderate conservatives on these issues. This is a truthful context.

And think about this staggering fact: The last budget used by the federal government to determine spending priorities was signed in the fall of 2007 by George W. Bush for fiscal year 2008. There has not been one annual budget passed since then. Obama has not served one day in office with a spending budget in place. NOT ONE DAY. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid chose to support Obama’s insane spending binge by funding government with continuing resolutions for Fiscal years 2009, 2010, 2011 and now 2012. Democrats held filibuster-proof majorities in both houses of congress for 2008, 2009, 2010 yet they never even proposed a budget. They could have passed a budget of any size, but they never even brought one forth to discuss any limit on deficit spending.

Yet those same people who made a conscious choice to avoid their primary job of creating a budget have the nerve to call the Tea Party terrorists. Who exactly is the economic terrorist in this discussion?

Thanks again for reading.

Source is here from TLR.

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