A brief history of time, not so long ago when I was naive but my fellow countrymen took my hand and showed me the path of righteousness.
I go back now a decade and more, though the awakening within my being to something amiss goes back even farther. I was ignorant a long time, it took a long time to get to where I am today. I have been illuminated.(shout out to my co-conspirators!)
I remember when it was 2001 and we had a new president, and the economy was not so hot, another period of recession in fact.
If you don't recall, and I can't fault you if you can't, the duration of that recession, the unemployment rate, and decline in GDP were in nature milder than they are now. As you can see from the link above, so don't take my word for it.
It was a horrible time back then, roughly seven months into this recession, those nuts took out the World Trade Center. A target selected to impact our economy while we were experiencing a economic set back already.
By November of that year we were out of recession.
Never ones to give George Bush any credit, my Democrat friends explained patiently how miserably the whole situation had been handled by the President. In fact they also placed all the ills of NAFTA on the President too, though I knew enough that that agreement was signed almost ten years before he came to office!(My first clue something was amiss.)
Oh how I remember when John Kerry and the honorable John Edwards campaigned across the country civilly explaining that millions of jobs have been lost under Bush, and that we can do better!
The unemployment rate in 2004? A high of 5.7% in January falling to 5.4% at election time. That just wasn't good enough I was taught, and I was a good student.
One thing I remember vividly, and the facts support me, is that the recession under Bush began less than two months after he took office. Proof, his critics said that his policies have failed.
Alas, Bush won a second term and John Kerry was silenced. But not the whole Democrat establishment.
For the next two years, with unemployment continuing its free fall to the mid 4%, the loyal opposition groused and groused, day in and day out, about how faulty the President's policies were, and how much better we, as Americans, should expect from our leadership.
In 2006 the Democrat leadership came up with a great idea, take power away from the miserable policies of George Bush and the Republicans in power.
And they Did!
Unfortunately, beginning in April of 2007 the unemployment rate began to escalate from 4.4% to 7.3% by the end of 2008. That's quite a climb! Worse than what the nation was doing when John Kerry was saying we needed a change.
Having no regard for what they were teaching me just fours years earlier, nor what they promised merely two years ago, the Democrats nominated a new standard bearer for their party in 2008 -- the eloquent and young Mr. Barack Obama. Wasting no time, and even less regard for accuracy, the candidate again pressed the issue of the economy, that Bush was at fault and that He(Obama) can do better.
So the Great Recession, as they say, became not a product of the Democrat policies of Congress which usurped power from the President in 2006, but a claim supported by Bush's very own signature on all those Democrat legislative initiatives.
But truth is as you perceive it, and I've wondered how they can sell the "Great" when clearly the recession of the Carter years was statistically worse. But maybe they knew it was only to get worse when they controlled both congress and the presidency.
And it sure did!
Today Mr. Obama is running for re-election. His four years of policies were preceded by two years of Democrat policies in Congress that bore the rubber stamp of George Bush. Today unemployment is about 8.3%. A number made worse by the acknowledgement that millions have fallen out of the labor force and are not counted anymore.
And still they blame Bush!
Leadership, Mr. Kerry taught me, is what this nation sorely lacks.
Or am I not suppose to remember?
I go back now a decade and more, though the awakening within my being to something amiss goes back even farther. I was ignorant a long time, it took a long time to get to where I am today. I have been illuminated.(shout out to my co-conspirators!)
I remember when it was 2001 and we had a new president, and the economy was not so hot, another period of recession in fact.
If you don't recall, and I can't fault you if you can't, the duration of that recession, the unemployment rate, and decline in GDP were in nature milder than they are now. As you can see from the link above, so don't take my word for it.
It was a horrible time back then, roughly seven months into this recession, those nuts took out the World Trade Center. A target selected to impact our economy while we were experiencing a economic set back already.
By November of that year we were out of recession.
Never ones to give George Bush any credit, my Democrat friends explained patiently how miserably the whole situation had been handled by the President. In fact they also placed all the ills of NAFTA on the President too, though I knew enough that that agreement was signed almost ten years before he came to office!(My first clue something was amiss.)
Oh how I remember when John Kerry and the honorable John Edwards campaigned across the country civilly explaining that millions of jobs have been lost under Bush, and that we can do better!
The unemployment rate in 2004? A high of 5.7% in January falling to 5.4% at election time. That just wasn't good enough I was taught, and I was a good student.
One thing I remember vividly, and the facts support me, is that the recession under Bush began less than two months after he took office. Proof, his critics said that his policies have failed.
Alas, Bush won a second term and John Kerry was silenced. But not the whole Democrat establishment.
For the next two years, with unemployment continuing its free fall to the mid 4%, the loyal opposition groused and groused, day in and day out, about how faulty the President's policies were, and how much better we, as Americans, should expect from our leadership.
In 2006 the Democrat leadership came up with a great idea, take power away from the miserable policies of George Bush and the Republicans in power.
And they Did!
Unfortunately, beginning in April of 2007 the unemployment rate began to escalate from 4.4% to 7.3% by the end of 2008. That's quite a climb! Worse than what the nation was doing when John Kerry was saying we needed a change.
Having no regard for what they were teaching me just fours years earlier, nor what they promised merely two years ago, the Democrats nominated a new standard bearer for their party in 2008 -- the eloquent and young Mr. Barack Obama. Wasting no time, and even less regard for accuracy, the candidate again pressed the issue of the economy, that Bush was at fault and that He(Obama) can do better.
So the Great Recession, as they say, became not a product of the Democrat policies of Congress which usurped power from the President in 2006, but a claim supported by Bush's very own signature on all those Democrat legislative initiatives.
But truth is as you perceive it, and I've wondered how they can sell the "Great" when clearly the recession of the Carter years was statistically worse. But maybe they knew it was only to get worse when they controlled both congress and the presidency.
And it sure did!
Today Mr. Obama is running for re-election. His four years of policies were preceded by two years of Democrat policies in Congress that bore the rubber stamp of George Bush. Today unemployment is about 8.3%. A number made worse by the acknowledgement that millions have fallen out of the labor force and are not counted anymore.
And still they blame Bush!
Leadership, Mr. Kerry taught me, is what this nation sorely lacks.
Or am I not suppose to remember?
No comments:
Post a Comment