Bush's Mess

I woke up this morning and I wept.

I wept for my beloved country, and for all that we have lost. I wept for my countrymen who don't seem to realize what they've just done to themselves.  And I wept for the hundreds of thousands of military members whose ballots were mysteriously lost, burned up in a plane crash, or lost when a ship sank, or never got sent at all, or were kept hidden in a closet for a month and whose voices will not be heard.

America was once described as the last, best hope on Earth.  Were is our hope on Earth now?  Do we just endure until we can move on to the next life?  No, we retreat.  We regroup.  And we come out fighting for our freedom once more.

A big part of that freedom is getting information out, and making sure people can make informed decisions before voting.  I was talking with one of my coworkers this morning, and she said she still believed Obama could fix the economy.  She didn't have a clue as to what his plan to actually do that is, but she believed in him.

I asked her why he didn't do it in his first term, especially during his first two years of his first term when he had control of both houses of Congress-- including a veto-proof super majority in the Senate.

Her response was "Because he had to clean up Bush's mess!"  Four years later, that's all they can come up with.  Still blaming Bush.

OK, now, I'm a little confused here.  Exactly what part of "Bush's mess" did he clean up?  Well, the economy.  But what part of the economy?

Was it the unemployment rate?  

Um, no.  That was 7.8% the day Obama took office. and is 7.9% today.  It's been above 8% for most of his first term, and true unemployment -- you know, what you get when you aren't playing dances with numbers-- is closer to 14%.  So, no.  He didn't clean that up.

Was it poverty?  

Again, no.  When Bush left office, there were 35 million people on food stamps.  Today, that number stands at nearly 48 million, so that can't be it, either.

How about median family income?  On the day Obama was inaugurated, median family income was around $55,000.  Today, it's down to $50,000-- a net loss of $5000 per year.  Doesn't sound like that mess has been cleaned up.

Maybe she meant the national debt.  

No, when Democrats took over both houses of Congress in 2006, the national debt was $948 billion.  This is important because there was a junior senator from Illinois named Barak Hussein Obama voting on all this spending.  By the time that junior senator was elected president, the national debt was $10.1 trillion.  By the end of his first term, the national debt had risen to $16 trillion, and is still climbing steadily.  So that's not cleaned up.

Oh, wait, maybe she meant the budget deficit. 

Yeah, it's true that there is no budget deficit, but that's only because there is no budget.  And there hasn't been one since Bush left office, so I don't see how that's been cleaned up.

Or could it be our credit rating? 

When Obama took office, the US had a Standard & Poor credit rating of AAA.  That's triple A.  Since then, it's been downgraded twice and currently stands at AA-.  It's so bad, China won't loan us any more money.  They say we're a bad risk.  So, no, I'd say that hasn't been cleaned up, either.

Oh, I get it, he cleaned up the mess in Iraq.  He ended Bush's war there.  

I'll give you that, but just know that there's a huge difference between ending a war and winning a war.  We didn't win that war.  Iraq kicked us out.  You see, in any country that the U.S. wants to maintain a military presence in, there must be an agreement between our government and the host country's government called a Status Of Forces Agreement.  This defines the terms and conditions under which our troops may stay there-- everything from building leases to how many locals must be hired to work on base.  Our two governments couldn't agree on a SOFA, so Iraq asked us to leave.  Kicked us out, basically.  But the key phrase here is "maintain a military presence."  That they were trying to hammer out a SOFA in the first place tells me that he never intended to bring the troops home.  So, yeah, he brought them home, but not as triumphant victors.  As whipped dogs with our tails between our legs.

But he got bin Laden.  

No, SEAL team 6 got bin Laden.

But he made the gutsy call to take action.

No, actually Leon Panetta, Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarrett, and a couple of other people made that call after Obama had passed on three previous opportunities to get bin Laden.  So afraid were they that he would say no again that they didn't even tell him they were doing it until the helicopters were already in Pakistan.  Then someone had to get him from the golf course to watch the hit go down on TV.  So, no.  HE didn't clean up that mess.

Well, he got the economy moving again.

No, the economy is limping along at less than 2% growth.  That's not moving.  That's stagnation. And it's actually gone down each year he's been in office, so that's not cleaning anything up.

So, can somebody help me out here?  Just what part of Bush's mess did he clean up?

I can't figure it out. 


Help?