What is this? A circle-jerk for people ridiculously uneducated on social policies, economics and the current status of both?
Jesus H. Christ.
The Congressional Budget Office attributed 1.2 million job losses to 9/11.
The Congressional Budget Office attributed over 1 million job losses to a recession that began six months prior to Bush taking office.
The Congressional Budget Office attributed over 1 million job losses to NAFTA and the Chinese Trade Agreement.
That's over 3 million jobs lost that Bush could do nothing to prevent. Despite that, the short-term economic policies he enacted managed to stop the bleeding and halted the recession, pulling a complete 180 and still managing to come out with positive growth in the GDP. He also created 2 million jobs in less than 2 years, despite the struggling economy. And of course the average payroll went down, there were millions of jobs during the Tech/Dot Com Bubble that were grossly overpaying. When that crash came about - again, completely out of Bush's realm of influence - those jobs evaporated and people had to [pause for gasp] actually work again.
Then there are the tax cuts which went only to the richest 1%. Right. I wish people would do five minutes of homework before quoting a Michael Moore movie. Not only did the middle class receive the largest cut in their percentages, the entire tax bracketing system was reworked to create an entirely new bracket that is free of taxes. For an explanation using real-world numbers that is dumbed down for the people who need it, please take the time to educate yourself by reading this:
http://www.movv.com/site/taxes.doc
To address things in order:
When you move to Asia, don't forget to send Bill Clinton a Thank You note. It was his trade policies that spurred outsourcing in such large numbers to begin with. Kerry tried to say Bush was giving breaks to companies that outsource, but it was Clinton who encouraged the behavior, Bush simply didn't have a plan to remove the incentives.
Goodbye to the middle-class? Not quite. While the middle class is shrinking, it did so at a rate of only 1.5% over the course of three years. Considering the job loss Bush inherited on top of 9/11, I'd say that's pretty good. Also, it is unclear whether the trend has reversed during 2004, as job growth has been recorded every month since September of 2003. More info here:
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx@DocID=249.html
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Very not true. Wages are up 2.5% at the last report, while overall income is down 3.4%. The reason for the disparity is that hour-based wage earners have seen an increase in income, while the decrease in middle and upper management and supervisory income, as well as alternate income from things such as investments, have fallen significantly enough to offset that growth. Bottom line? The rich are getting poorer and the poor are getting richer.
Separation of Church and State? I think people need to take a step back from this and try to remember the view that our forefathers had regarding this. When they drafted this portion of our Constitution, they did it for two reasons:
A) To keep government from running the church, and
B) To keep the church from controlling the government
The Ten Commandments being displayed or saying "One Nation Under God" or coins sporting "In God We Trust" do not threaten to opress any religion, nor do they exclusively infer that our government is controlled by the church. Quite simply, the United States of America was founded almost entirely on Protestant Christian ideals and beliefs and those ideas are irrevocably tied to our Constitution and legislation whether people like it or not. And to imply that Bush is somehow going to negate Freedom of Religion is baseless and ridiculous.
So, in closing, if creating an economy which is more stable long-term and rebuilding the intelligence community as well as the military and enacting unprecedented standards for public school systems are all symbolic of being fucked in the ass.. someone pass the KY.
