How Obama blamed backward and forward

Although President Obama complained for 6-7 years about President Bush and the economy he inherited, you didn't hear him mention the recession Bush inherited. Not the falling economy after 9-11, but the 2000 recession. The reason he didn't use Bush's method to restore stability was Bush had used a TAX CUT, not stealing from Peter the employed to pay Paul the unemployed.  Bush’s method didn't give Washington more power over our lives. Democrats hate, hate, hate for you to keep more of your money to make your own decisions.

Specifically, EGTRRA of 2001:

*Increased the tax-deductible contributions people could make to their IRA accounts.
*Doubled the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000.
*Expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit.
*Provided greater tax deductions for education expenses and savings.
*Reduced the gift tax.
*Provided relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax.
*Phased-out the estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes so that they were eliminated in 2010.
*Reduced the “marriage penalty” by doubling the standard deduction for married couples. It also doubled the income threshold for married couples for the 15 percent tax bracket. *Those measures made the tax rates equivalent to what the couples would have had if they were single.
*Eliminated the planned phase-out of personal exemptions for those earning over $150,000, and the phase-down of itemized deductions for those earning over $100,000.

And the burst housing bubble of 2007-2008? You can thank the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Our wise politicians actually believed that if you put a low income worker deeper in debt for a housing mortgage, you could lift the family out of poverty with just the appearance of affluence. They new better than local bankers. What? Require 20% down like our first home loan in 1962? You must be a bigot. And they invited speculators in. Sort of like the current education debt, which no one wants to examine, not even Trump.

Republicans could elect another Clinton

For those of you who think the Fox Channel is spawn of the devil because it isn't a mouth piece of the Democrat Party, you're missing a great analysis of the new book by the former President George H.W. Bush. I do wonder why it was released during Jeb's campaign--the left will snip and slice and pull out juicy parts to hurt Jeb and destroy George W. But for Republicans who will see it, it's a good reminder that YOU elected Bill Clinton by chasing after Perot. I didn't, because I was a Democrat then and of course voted for Clinton--never thought anything through in those days except do what the party says. Let's not make the same mistake and elect Hillary by pouting that our candidate didn't make the cut in a field that's the best in our history as a country.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/05/politics/bush-biography-nyt/

ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/05/george-h-w-bush-slams-iron-ass-cheney-arrogant-rumsfeld-in-new-biography-also-faults-bush-41/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/us/politics/elder-bush-says-his-son-was-served-badly-by-aides.html?_r=0

The daily memo

The President apparently gets his daily briefings as memos rather than in person the way other presidents have done. Seems they pile up unread. WaPo reported 2 years ago: "During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting." That explains a lot.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-obama-skipping-more-than-half-of-his-daily-intelligence-meetings/2012/09/10/6624afe8-fb49-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html

“. . . the former president held his intelligence meeting six days a week, no exceptions — usually with the vice president, the White House chief of staff, the national security adviser, the director of National Intelligence, or their deputies, and CIA briefers in attendance. Once a week, he held an expanded Homeland Security briefing that included the Homeland Security adviser, the FBI director and other homeland security officials. Bush also did more than 100 hour-long “deep dives” in which he invited intelligence analysts into the Oval Office to get their unvarnished and sometimes differing views. Such meetings deepened the president’s understanding of the issues and helped analysts better understand the problems with which he was wrestling.”

Like or hate Bush, he was more engaged and relied on a stronger base of knowledge than Obama, who seems to  believe he knows more than everyone in the room, or the world.

How Obama stays popular with the uninformed

Obama has two very successful methods for staying popular as a leader. 1) Focus on Bush's mistakes, and 2) ignore his own.

Which was a bigger error, the Abu Ghraib abuses by military guards which Bush probably knew nothing about, or the fumbling of the closing of Guantanamo prison on which Obama campaigned in 2008?

Which is a bigger scandal, the passing of the Patriot Act after 9/11 with bipartisan support and debate under Bush, or its expansion in secret under Obama?

Bush supported traditional marriage and was consistent regardless of political attacks; Obama publicly supported traditional marriage until he was pushed into applauding same sex marriage in order to get gay support for the 2012 election.
Bush expanded government health care (Pt. D drug coverage in Medicare for 40 million seniors) with strong bipartisan support; Obama got no support from Republicans for Obamacare (estimated to eliminate employer coverage for 40 million), which increasingly is proving to be horribly more expensive and invasive to privacy (IRS) than he promised.

Bush was criticized for not offering war time detainees at Gitmo protections afforded American citizens; Obama has been slicing, dicing and trashing those freedoms we all should have as Americans. He and his cronies not only claim the 5th (the only amendment they like), they claim ignorance, absence and Cincinnati for their illegal behavior.

Madoff, Dreier and Blagojevich

Marc Dreier, the big spender and power hungry lawyer, has losses alleged to be $380 million plus a bunch of staff and partners wondering where their next paycheck is coming from (jail?), and the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme could be $50 billion, an amount hard to hide, so Rod Blogojevich trying to weasel a paltry $500,000 and a job for his wife looks like small potatoes doesn't it? Plus, the outrageous other stories make Obama a charmed politician again--pushed the criminal activity of the Illinois governor right off the front page. But then, Obama hardly knew him. Helped with his campaign, his staff talked to him recently, but really, he's absolutely clean. All the media say so. And look how they sniffed out all those other stories of corruption! Yah! So much for investigative reporting.

Really, I've never been so discouraged or dispirited with both our government and our greedy, power hungry movers and shakers. It's hard to say which is more corrupt. Who do you trust these days? Certainly not George Bush who has allowed the government to slide into socialism using the economy as an excuse--after he became the all time big spender; and certainly not Barack Obama who will finish the job with his marxist buddies; and not an ex-president who took millions from foreign interests who hope his wife will stroke them; and not scummy Wall Street CEOs buying art collections and mansions, and not the inept union bosses; and not an ex-vice president in business with Hank Paulson to sell phony carbon credits; and not the people we elected who promised so much and then threw it all away; and not the regulators they appointed and hired to see that everything was done right and then didn't notice a thing was wrong despite a ballooning staff and budget. . .

I think we all, especially me, need to apologize to the welfare cheats and illegal, criminal aliens who have been stealing from us for the past 20-30 years. To all the lazy bums we've griped about, my sincere apology. Yes, you screwed up, but you didn't reach for the stars, didn't set high enough goals in your petty crimes. Some of you went to jail, and Dreier and Madoff are out walking around, or on "house arrest." Is that fair? I wish now you were the only crooks we needed to worry about. These small time criminals have allowed our prejudices toward the poor and stupid to take our eye off the rich and smart crooks. I think I can even say the little guy had limited options. But what do you say about the guys who went to Harvard and Yale, who cheated the friends and charities and staff who trusted them, who sat in the pew or synagogue when not jetting around the world, who threw lavish parties, and moved in all the right social circles, who sold the voters down the river, and partied and parceled out the pork 'til they couldn't hold any more?

List of Madoff's Clients, NYT

Six questions on the bailout

Over at City Journal, Nicole Gelinas thinks President Bush, Secretary Paulson and Congress should have taken a deep breath and answered some questions. Read the whole story--I've included just the questions. But I suspect the trillion dollar deal is done. I can see why Obama didn't want to return to DC to provide input. He doesn't want to be anywhere near this when the far left finds out there's no money for the goodies he's promised. As one commenter at Politico observed, ". . . if you were voting for Obama because of all the freebies he promised he will get you, that ship has sailed. That leaves voting for the candidate that is best at keeping our country secure." Here's the questions.

One. Will this bailout plan actively delay recovery?

Two. Isn’t Treasury worried about the dead-weight loss to the economy that the bailout could represent?

Three. How will this plan restart the now-moribund credit markets?

Four. When the Treasury prices mortgage-related assets under its program, what criteria will it use in assessing current values?

Five. Will the Treasury buy derivative securities like credit-default swaps under this program?

(Six) Bonus Question: The proposed bailout plan means that many creditors to financial institutions would be effectively off the hook for mistakes made by the firms to which those creditors lent money. (Injecting government capital into flailing banks, which some have proposed, could carry the same risk.) But in Thursday’s FDIC-engineered failure of Washington Mutual, the nation’s sixth-largest commercial bank, uninsured creditors will suffer losses made through similar management and investor miscalculations. Why is it acceptable for WaMu creditors to suffer, but not the creditors of the institutions that will be able to sell their bad assets to the taxpayer? Aren’t we setting ourselves up for worse problems in the future, by encouraging future lenders to big financial institutions not to worry too much about the toxic assets those companies may be amassing?

Grow up, Mr. Obama

This speech was about Israel, now 60 years old. Stop trying to crash the party. Your whining and hiding behind your supporters' skirts and Soros' money are really irritating. Your tantrum is an embarrassment. Run a FIND check on that 5 page speech. You aren't in it, neither is Democrat, neither is candidate, nor any mention of our campaign. Your political views and values have excluded you.

"Ultimately, to prevail in this struggle, we must offer an alternative to the ideology of the extremists by extending our vision of justice and tolerance, freedom and hope. These values are the self-evident right of all people, of all religions, in all of the world because they are a gift from Almighty God. Securing these rights is also the surest way to secure peace. Leaders who are accountable to their people will not pursue endless confrontation and bloodshed. Young people with a place in their society and a voice in their future are less likely to search for meaning in radicalism. And societies where citizens can express their conscience and worship their God will not export violence, they will be partners for peace."

President Bush has never backed down on his belief that democracy is the best system--for everyone. You might disagree, some in his own party do too. You might call it cowboy diplomacy, but as Daniel Henniger pointed out today in the WSJ, even when the democracy isn't very good or stumbles, it's way ahead of what the people in Burma and China have as we see their totalitarian, marxist governments turning down aid.

Instead of looking for yourself in the "some" comments, why not find yourself in the "we" comments? Tell us exactly what you think of democracy and the value of every man, woman, and child. Are you picking on the word "some" because you don't see yourself in the "we?"

"We believe in the matchless value of every man, woman, and child. So we insist that the people of Israel have the right to a decent, normal, and peaceful life, just like the citizens of every other nation.

We believe that democracy is the only way to ensure human rights. So we consider it a source of shame that the United Nations routinely passes more human rights resolutions against the freest democracy in the Middle East than any other nation in the world.

We believe that religious liberty is fundamental to civilized society. So we condemn anti-Semitism in all forms – whether by those who openly question Israel's right to exist, or by others who quietly excuse them.

We believe that free people should strive and sacrifice for peace. So we applaud the courageous choices Israel's leaders have made. We also believe that nations have a right to defend themselves and that no nation should ever be forced to negotiate with killers pledged to its destruction.

We believe that targeting innocent lives to achieve political objectives is always and everywhere wrong. So we stand together against terror and extremism, and we will never let down our guard or lose our resolve." Bush speech

Update: Michelle Malkin writes: "He could be talking about Jimmy Carter, Cindy Sheehan, the White Flag Democrat leaders in the House and Senate, or hell, his own State Department," I wrote, but concluded that “if the shoe fits,” Obama should wear it and stop whining.

Today, the White House says Bush was talking about That ’70s Appeaser, Jimmy Carter, not the Messiah.

Doesn’t matter who exactly Bush had in mind. The shoe still fits Obama’s delicate foot, but he refuses to slide into the glass slipper of appeasement and own it." There's more.

Update 2: Heard on the radio today (paraphrase) and I don't recall where: "for a guy who sat in the pew for 20 years and didn't hear the racist, anti-American sermons of Rev. Wright, he sure didn't have trouble hearing his own name which was never used in the President's speech."

Update 3: "It was remarkable to see Barack Obama’s hysterical diatribe in response to a speech in which his name wasn’t even mentioned. These are serious issues that deserve a serious debate, not the same tired partisan rants we heard today from Senator Obama. Senator Obama has pledged to unconditionally meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who pledges to wipe Israel off the map, denies the Holocaust, sponsors terrorists, arms America’s enemies in Iraq and pursues nuclear weapons. What would Senator Obama talk about with such a man? It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don’t have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Senator Obama understands that, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment and determination to keep us safe.” —Tucker Bounds, spokesman John McCain 2008 via the Page

Update 4: Neo-Neocon "It has now become a low blow to strike any blow at Obama. It has now become officially an “attack” to campaign at all against him—or even to suggest opposition to something he may have done or may have said, whether you mention him or not.

Case in point: President Bush is not allowed to allude to appeasement as a bad thing without Obama (and many Democrats) getting into an outraged hissy fit about it."

Update 5: "But it's also possible that Obama & Co. are sincere--that when they hear the president talking about countenancing hatred, appeasing terrorists and breaking ties with Israel, they think: He's talking about us!" James Taranto, Best of the web, May 16

Update 6: " Since the end of 2002, the Democrats have turned hard to the left on foreign policy, with Lieberman a rare dissenting voice. The Connecticut senator praised President Bush for his Knesset speech last week, and said that Bush's criticism of those who advocate appeasement applies to Obama, whether the president meant it to or not." James Taranto, Best of the web, May 19

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George W. Bush is right about a lot of things

Not that right is popular. Not that right doesn't bring unintended consequences. Not that right will unite the people. He's definitely right about these--either morally, spiritually, politically or economically--but not all for each. In no particular order.

1. George W. Bush is right to keep his very talented, beautiful, smart, librarian wife at his side, in the sidelines, and in the bleachers cheering him on, supporting him, but not making policy. I like Laura Bush a lot; I didn't vote for her. I didn't even realize how important this was to me until I've watched Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama in the current campaign. Way too much focus on them and what they say and think. And Hillary Clinton, too, when she was First Lady is probably the best reason for the spouse to stay by the president's side and not under foot. Part of the hostility toward her from conservatives and libertarians is the way she tried to take over important segments of the economy when she had no elected office, nor ever had one. Her "35 years" experience mantra includes her years as a President's wife and a Governor's wife. That makes her as big a cheat as her husband in my mind.

2. George Bush was the right man to lead us calmly out of the chaos that followed 9/11. In my life time, I'll probably not see two stronger leaders in a crisis than George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani.

3. George Bush was right to cut taxes to release money for investing in the U.S. economy, thereby helping American workers and the global economy both, strengthening us all around. The cut in taxes put many Americans to work, and also brought increased revenue into the coffers of the federal government--which may or may not be positive considering our Congress will spend all it gets. But it is a far superior plan than punishing success and driving our investment money overseas so foreign workers benefit.

4. George Bush was right to veto the huge SCHIP increases last fall, leaving the dismantling of private health insurance to be on the conscience of the Democrats. The 1997 SCHIP was Hillary's plan to begin with and she will see to it, either as a senator or president, that we all come under the government's thumb, that all but the richest in society, or our highest level government officials, will have low level, dumbed down universal care.

5. He was right to invade Iraq and remove Saddam from power and to free millions of Afghans from the control of the Al-Qaeda. We won the war, but huge mistakes were made on the clean up. The biggest mistake was not securing the borders, something Americans aren't very good at. Also, although it was not his fault, he listened to the intelligence gathered in the previous administration about WMD accepting the wholehearted but duplicitous support of the likes of Kennedy and Edwards, Kerry and Clinton. He was mistaken that they would keep their word the way he does. He cannot be moved once he sets a course; they waffle, blow in the wind, and melt in the heat of unhappy supporters. Huge mistake to trust them.

6. Bush was never better than in his choices of John Roberts and Samuel Alito for Supreme Court. I'm still wondering if that misstep of nominating Harriet Miers was just a tease--to show he could nominate a woman knowing she couldn't be confirmed. It's not in the same category of turning over policy to your wife, but it lost him a lot of friends among Republicans who questioned his sanity! These two men, along with Clarence Thomas, are our best chance of keeping a tricameral federal government, instead of a court that makes laws, a president who keeps his wife happy dabbling in policy while he fondles female staff, and a Congress that just passes out the bacon slabs to each other, crossing the aisle with a wink and a handshake. If you think Bush has too much power, ask yourself why Hillary with "35 years experience" or Obama with the power of his charming personality, will fix it if not by usurping more power from the other branches?

7. George Bush was right about stem cell research. By forcing researchers to go back to the lab and look beyond using human embryonic stem cells of 4-5 day old embryos (pre-born human beings), he rescued our nation from a worse ethical dilemma and battle than abortion and slavery, earlier versions of devaluing life in our history. Embryonic stem cell research was never illegal, but he forced the researchers to look beyond the American people for the money--and private sources wanted to see results--but there were none. Many millions of lives will be saved because GWB stood fast.

8. Morally, he was right to be concerned about our schools failing so many of our children, leaving millions of kids behind and unable to function in our technological society. The results from NCLB haven't been great, in my opinion because the federal government's hold on education was way too big to begin with. It should not be allowed to reach into the classroom and tell a student how to behave or a teacher to teach. But that certainly didn't start with Bush. He took on the teachers' unions, even though they didn't have the answers either. Standards weren't being met. Crummy teachers and awful school administrators had protection. Well, being morally right, but wrong in outcome gets a president no friends, plus he's spent more on education than any president before him and still the kids are failing. Indirectly, he's proven once again that more money isn't the answer.

9. Morally, he was right to care that millions are in our country illegally taking jobs from Americans, weakening our neighbors to the south, and experience personal suffering. Trying to fix the horrible 1986 law that allowed this with bits and patches just isn't practical--it was a social experiment of the 1960s gone bad--the belief that too many Europeans and white people were immigrating and we needed more brown, black and Asian to be "fair." Plus it cost him the support at the grass roots--those Americans who do not think La Raza should come here and take back 4 or 5 states because they don't like the outcome of the 19th century Mexican War. That's history. The backing of big unions and big business really make this amnesty issue look messy for Bush, and it didn't win any friends among the Democrats. Playing fast and loose with core beliefs in a mish-mash of bipartisanship never helps either side.

10. Morally and spiritually, he was right to want to reach out to Democrats to unite the people and heal all the hostility of the Clinton years in the 1990s. We hear Obama preaching the same sermon. But that's another thing that won't happen in my life time. George W. Bush is not a true conservative, but he is a Republican, and so on both sides of the aisle, he's got problems. He's bitterly hated and opposed because of the 2000 election and no amount of good ole boy glad handing will change that. Cowboy, that's a tough dogie to rope.

11. Economically and morally, he was right to try to fix Social Security, even as his own party gave him little support and caused his good intentions to fail. All the successful retirees I know have a combination of the plans he wanted--403-b, 401-K, IRA, and private investments. Government employees have such a plan. Unfortunately, leaders of both parties fought him on this and I'm left to believe that they have a vested interest in keeping a large part of the elderly population poor and dependent on government handouts. It buys votes, is the only explanation I can come up with.

I tried to make this a tidy list of 10, but George has just done too many things right in his 7 years as president.

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Bush's Legacy

From 2002-2004 the median net worth of Americans rose 25.8% nationwide, doubling for minorities, but net worth jumped 76.7% for women. (CFED report) Not only did President Bush free the women of Afghanistan and Iraq, he was good for American women. The subprime mess has changed many of those figures, I'm sure, since they included real estate assets. Many low income people were encouraged to buy into "the American dream," when they would have been better off renting. Still, many didn't lose anything because they didn't build equity--but the damage to their neighbors is awful, and that will show in the next report--perhaps for many years. Because of the housing slump and home values, you'll be hearing a steady drum beat from the candidates about the fragility of the poor and the awful Bush years. (Although we heard it in 2004 until the day after the election.)

In 1997 the federal government started a big program with three mandated summits to insure that Americans start saving more for retirement. The boomers are starting to retire, and if they didn't do anything proactive 25 or 30 years ago, I'm not sure even a government summit will help. We all know what happened to Bush's plan to save Social Security--not even Republicans supported him, joining with Democrats to make sure nothing got privatized.

[From the 2002 SAVERS Summit] 90% of people over 65 receive Social Security, and it is 38% of their income; 41% have retirement plans which are 18% of their income. That leaves a lot dependent on savings and investments, and 59% of seniors have that. Another 22% of over 65 year olds are still in the labor force.

Americans United for Change, a liberal lobbyist group (change seems to be the word of the moment) plans a year long campaign ($8.5 million) to besmirch Bush's record so he can leave office without claiming a legacy. Story. Since Clinton couldn't earn one (he's trying again), Bush's has to be taken away. Everything's about the gap and envy, isn't it? They are raising funds to do this. Even if I hated Bush, I think I'd want my money to go into something a bit more productive. But then, I'm not a rich Democrat.

The intolerant left

Arthur C. Brooks has an article in the WSJ today titled, "The intolerance of the left." For absolute hatred, scorn and intolerance of leaders, candidates and beliefs, the left is way over the edge.

Comparing the hysteria of right wing pundits in 1998 for President Clinton, on a temperature scale where zero was freezing, Gore and Clinton got the lowest score from 28% of the right wingers for an average temperature of 45. Bush-Chaney got an average temperature of 15 and 60% of the left have them a zero. More lefties would support Saddam Hussein than Bush, and routinely compare him to Hitler.

This week I heard a Christian woman say she was really torn by the Biblical command to pray for our leaders because she hoped Bush would be assassinated in his latest mideast trip. Need I suggest which political party she belongs to?

I said I didn't support Hillary Clinton for President, but if that was the nation's choice, I would certainly be on my knees every night (and not in a Monica way) in prayer for her and the nation! So when you hear liberal pols or preachers bemoaning how intolerant and hostile our politicians or public square have become, nod your head. It's true, especially of the liberal you're probably listening to.

Four years ago, gearing up for the 2004 campaign

Four years ago about this time I was complaining about our President:

But I do wish George Bush would stop spending money like a drunken Democrat (no name, but you know who I mean). In fact, his spending increases are far greater than Clinton’s on domestic programs for the same time period in office. This makes it difficult for Democrats to criticize him on domestic policy, since those are their pet programs, resulting in a fractured and lack luster campaign. Also, it is hard for Republicans to rein him in, since he is their guy. A responder to a Cato Institute paper says he “has become the "Mother of All Big Spenders."

Nothing's changed. He's a Republican, but not a Conservative. No one will soak the rich the way GWB has--the tax coffers are now around 60% supplied by the richest, compared to about 54% under Clinton. The Democrats' tax increases will be to punish success, not to grease any economic squeaky wheels. And they'll hit all of us who live on investments in our retirement. So where does that leave Edwards and his "two Americas" theme--the man who made his fortune suing the very companies we need we for surgeries and cancers, driving up the insurance costs of doctors, all the while promoting universal health care to dumb down the whole system. Want universal health care in a disaster like an epidemic or terrorist attack? Look to FEMA and Katrina for results. Want cheaper health care? You won't find it in Washington. In addition to what I pay for Medicare coverage (a lot), I'm paying $132 a month for Medi-gap.

Bush's Legacy

Early this morning on CBS News I heard two women discussing Bush's desire for a legacy, thus the recent Israeli-Palestinian summit. It was innocuous and bubble-headed even for women who read others' text for a living. I couldn't see the TV, but the "expert" had an annoying voice best for print journalism. I don't think he's seeking a legacy; we'll hope he will not be as interferring as Carter and Clinton as a former president, but be a gentleman like his father.

Here's my ten suggestions for a Bush legacy, in order of importance, five positive, five negative.

1) The appointment of two outstanding judges to the Supreme Court, Roberts and Alito. This will extend many years and perhaps be able to return the Supreme Court to its original intention, moving it away from creating law. Kennedy, his father's appointment after the Bork nomination failed, was a tremendous disappointment for conservatives, so it is possible that with time, this one won't be in number one place, but for now, that's where I'd place it for long term impact.

2) The tax cuts and overseeing the most robust economy in the history of this nation I'd place second. Facing my retirement in 2000 dependent on the health of the stock market, I was watching my accounts stagnate, and then tumble after 9/11. Right now the economy is softening and Democrats are making all the wrong moves, especially for retirees (look out boomers) mainly because they use taxes to punish, not to move the country forward.

3) Getting us back on our feet after 9/11. Although I didn't dislike Al Gore and wouldn't have been upset if he'd been President (my first election as a Republican), it is still hard to imagine his taking charge after that disaster. For awhile it looked like there might even be a resurgence of patriotism and love of country, but that quickly faded as the Bush hatred over the lost election of 2000 continued to fester and eat away at the reasoning faculties of otherwise sensible people.

4) Freeing more women in Afghanistan in the 21st century than Abraham Lincoln did slaves in the USA in the 19th century. We don't know yet the full consequences of this, because women were quite advanced in this country before it was stolen from them by the Taliban, and the climb back up will require a lot of will. American feminists have ignored this achievement rather than give Bush the credit.

5) Leading the country into an unpopular, controversial war with the support and backing of both parties, including some of the same senators who later reversed their decision. That Bush held strong and refused to abandon the Iraqi people the way Nixon did the Vietnamese is a huge legacy, especially for those he saved from the blood bath had he caved into demands for pull-outs and withdrawals from his enemies.

And on the negative side of the legacy ledger.

1) Offended his supporters and party by nominating a weak Supreme Court candidate (White House counsel Harriet Miers) and by attempting to partner with the Democrats on an amnesty bill for illegal immigrants. These two actions also hurt any Republicans who supported him on other issues.

2) Not being able to corral his stampeding RINOs and missing the opportunity to reform Social Security by taking total control back from the government to allow investment in personal accounts.

3) Standing firm in his resolve that all societies deserve and desire a democracy. Perhaps only history will decide this one, but you've got to admit trying to jump start a 7th century mentality and push or drag it into the 21st century, is a tough row to hoe.

4) The biggest tax spender on education ever to enter the White House, crafting a program with Ted Kennedy's help. Did he tell us during the 2000 campaign that he wanted to be the "education president?" Earmarks (pork) and wasted foreign aid--but that's more congressional, and something we've just come to expect from our government, isn't it? This and the next one have made him an anathema to many conservatives.

5) Expanding medical care to a government drug program with Ted Kennedy, thus laying the ground work for the Democrats to make it even worse and more expensive. I think government-doled, rock-bottom health care for every household earning less than $1 million is a real possibility after 2008. Those making over a million will still be able to purchase first class care like they do in socialist countries.

The stem cell miracle breakthrough

It will be interesting the see the left/right line up on the news of the new stem cell technique that doesn't require the complexity of removing an egg from a woman. I don't understand the old method or the new, except it doesn't come with the moral and ethical baggage of the old. Here's the explanation by Dr. Jonathon Lapook at CBS News.

What's so surprising is that the recipe is relatively easy to follow. I expect there will be an explosion of stem cell research all over the world.

Essentially, this new method makes the old way of destroying harvested or left over embryos the dinosaur. Researchers who have invested their careers, grants and labs in this are not going to be happy. It's like the guy who invested his fortune in buggy whips when people started buying into the idea of the automobile.

I don't think it will end the national debate peacefully, as WaPo quoted Rev. Thomas Berg. The left will never concede this victory to Bush. If he hadn't held the line on refusing to release federal money in destroying human life, this easier, simpler and cheaper method probably would not have been found.

[James] Thomson said he was surprised it didn't take longer to discover how to reprogram ordinary cells. The technique, he said, is so simple that "thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow." In contrast, the cloning approach is so complex and expensive that many scientists say it couldn't be used routinely to supply stem cells for therapy.

We'll just have to see. There have been promised breakthroughs before.

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When will Harry tie up the Senate complaining about Stark?

Congressman Stark (D-CA) says, "Ladies and gentlemen, the axis of evil is not just in the Middle East, it is right down here on Pennsylvania Avenue" and that the President of the United States, the man we elected, wants to blow people up for his own amusement. Harry, I think that's a bit more serious, and tougher on the troops than a private citizen calling a guy who didn't make it past basic training but who poses as a veteran, a 'phony soldier."

"You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

One thing about Democrats, they are hell bent on losing this war. I tried to send Stark an e-mail, but his contact page won't take messages from Ohio. Old Pete's a chicken as well as a traitor. All this because he didn't like the President's veto on the expansion of health care to 25 year old, middle-class children who already have private insurance.

4208

The Bush Tax Cuts

I disagree with Mr. Bush on a lot, but every time I go to a nice store or do some traveling, I whisper quietly, "Thanks, big guy. You might not be able to string two sentences together, but you know how to help retirees."

Most retirees if they planned well and listened to all the scare stories 30 years ago about how there wouldn't be Social Security by the time we retired, have a nest egg (private investments) a 403-b, or 401-k, or IRAs, annuities, or some other vehicle other than a passbook savings account. Our economy would probably have taken much longer to recover after the bubble burst in early 2000, and then sunk after 9/11 if not for the Bush tax cuts.

But the GAP ("getting all pissed") people are unhappy. GAPists don't care how good I have it or if I worked hard, led a quiet life and saved my pennies; if it's better than someone else, if there is an identifiable gap between my pension and that of a homeless guy who drank away his income, then life isn't fair.

This morning there was a news story (not an editorial) in the Wall St. Journal about the income inequality gap by Greg Ip. This gap is very distressing for liberals (as are health gaps, education gaps, leisure gaps, everything except the marriage gap, which alone can account for a lot of poverty). The 1% wealthiest of all tax filers earned 21.2% of all income [notice the word "earned" because I don't think Ip did]. Now that is a whopping .4% more than in 2000. Yes, it took that long for this "rising inequality" to show up on the graphs, but this causes much hand wringing.

Never mind that much of this gain resulted from technological changes that benefits the smart and well educated more than the less skilled, or that a lot of it is by gains of entertainers, celebs and sports figures, the darlings of the left. And what's really ugly (Ip doesn't use this word)? More than twice as many Wall Street professionals are in the top .5% of all earners than there are executives from non-financial companies. The writer claims that this gap is fueling anxiety among American workers. Are retirees anxious that Wall Street is doing well? Not likely. Our pensions and investments are the silent guest living in our homes--who doesn't eat, make noise, tease the cat, or change the channel--just hands over his paycheck to help with expenses.

Remember the hated Bush tax cuts? The poor got bigger tax cuts than the rich (although for some, something from nothing still results in zero--millions pay no taxes at all). At the bottom, the tax rate fell to 3% from 4.6% under Clinton. At the top the 1% richest folks' tax rate (what they paid) went from 37% under Clinton to 39% under Bush, according to author Greg Ip.

Why are the liberals so unhappy? Seems as though taxes actually fell for the rich despite the tax rate increase. (He includes no information on whether taxes actually fell for the poor--again, it's hard to subtract from zero). So now, the actual gap is widening. With the boomers coming up to the retirement trough, you'd better hope those rich folks keep paying their big taxes because they are covering for the folks at the bottom to say nothing of paying the salaries of armies of government workers.

4151

Fannie, Fred and Sam and the subprime mess

Most of the folks both parties in Congress want to bail out of the widening home mortgage mess are not the poor minority Pedros and Letitias in the red lined neighborhoods of Cleveland you read about in the newspaper sob stories. They are very wealthy investors who were flipping houses in Sarasota, or hiding from the tax man in Colorado, or packaging jumbo loans or going after no doc and low doc loans in Chicago.

Here's an ad in one of my newest premiere magazines, Vertical Living.

A $1,000,000 loan with payments of only $2,528 per month
1.000% start rate / 7.516% APR
Fixed payment for 1st year
No prepayment penalties
Interest-only payments
Unlimited cash out-refinancing available

Adjust those numbers a little, and the appeal is the same as it was for all those low income buyers a year ago. How long before this buyer is asking you for help?

At this time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac* can't go that high, but oh, they are knocking, knocking at the door of Congress. Last Saturday the WSJ Hot Topic pointed out that FHA (Federal Housing Authority, a New Deal program that long ago outlived its usefulness) wants to suspend downpayment requirements to insure even zero-equity loans. :

It's a testament to the FHA's underwriting ineptitude that, even during the biggest housing boom in a generation, the agency's delinquency rate has somehow doubled over the last 10 years. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, the FHA's delinquency rate was 5 times higher than the rate on conventional prime mortgage loans, double the rate on loans with private, mortgage insurance, and even slightly high than the rate on subprime loans. . . Downpayment assistance program has suffered default rates as high as 20%. "Uncle Sam: Subprime Lender" 9-22-2007, WSJ

Freddie and Fannie
went up to Capitol Hill
to fawn for a bigger profit
Sticking you and me with the bill.

With help from our taxes
They'll package and resell,
a windfall for the banks and rich,
for the rest of us, economic hell.

Years ago the original aim
was to help the struggling poor.
Now they seek those jumbo loans--
Congress and Bush! Show them the door!

*Freddie Mac is the actual name of The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, created in 1970. It buys mortgages on the secondary market, pools them, and sells them as mortgage-backed securities to investors on the open market. Fannie Mae is the former Federal National Mortgage Association, which used to be a government agency, but is now a private corporation. In some sort of quasi-nightmare, these two are supposed to be "competition" for each other.

We're off to Ireland

Although I had access to a computer when we were in Finland last year, I don't expect to be blogging from Ireland. I've posted our schedule and sites here. I'm hoping the weather will be coolish, because I've packed more fall clothes than summer. I've got lots of things here for you to read, in case you miss me.

It's not cheap to travel, but thanks to President Bush's tax cuts we can. I've written about this before. I watched our investments and my 403-b stagnate and sink the year I retired (2000), then they took another hit from terrorists the following year. Our house was on the market on 9/11, and talk about real estate going nowhere! But we've weathered the storm, and the economy has been booming regardless of how the Democrats have tried to stop it and nay-say it.

Mr. Bush and I don't agree on many things, like immigration reform, North American union, and his inability to regroup his Republican Congress so that he could push through some much needed reforms in Social Security. The war hasn't gone well, many mistakes were made, but I'm thankful we aren't abandoning the Iraqis like we did the Vietnamese, or negotiating millions into starvation the way we did in Korea. And looking at the current crop of candidates, he may be the last Republican president who will hold the line on killing the unborn and using them for medical research.

However, I do thank him for this wonderful trip to Ireland to visit the home of my ancestors (Scots-Irish, 18th c., settled in TN), a place about the size of Ohio but with a much bigger history, a fascinating culture and a now booming economy.

4088

Are Democrats stupid?

No, but they know the American people, and they may be right. If something doesn't work, we just keep doing it, or electing it hoping for better luck next time. The Democratic candidates for president are on the road to New Orleans, the most corrupt, the most patronage puffed, the most crime ridden city and the most bamboozled by the Democratic party (as of August 2005--Katrina Hurricane) in the United States. It will be another attempt to lay this at the feet of President Bush, which is so absurd I do wish the man would step on them with his big cowboy boots and just lay it all out about whose responsibility it was that the city was sitting on leaking levees controlled by parish boards, that its public housing was filled with poor blacks with no hope, that its government health care was the pits, that the streets were swarming with criminals and that the Mayor and the Governor never did a thing to evacuate those projects even with all the warnings they had, letting the buses drown in the flooding and the criminals take over while they evacuated their cabinets and family members.

But here comes another black, Democratic savior for the Democrat racists in NOLA--Barack Yo'mama Obama

The Gulf Coast restoration, Mr. Obama said, has been weighed down by red tape that has kept billions of dollars from reaching Louisiana communities. As president, he said, he would streamline the bureaucracy, strengthen law enforcement to curb a rise in crime and immediately close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet in order to restore wetlands to protect against storms.

Mr. Obama also said that he would seek to lessen the influence of politics in the Federal Emergency Management Agency by giving its director a fixed term, similar to the structure of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FEMA director would serve a six-year term, under Mr. Obama’s plan, and report directly to the president.

Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, and several presidential hopefuls are scheduled to arrive in Louisiana this week to highlight how New Orleans has — and has not — recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Democrats have sought to use the city as an example of what they believe was among the Bush administration’s greatest domestic failures. Jeff Zeleny, NYT, Aug. 26, 2007 Jeff, how'd you keep a straight face writing this drivel?

Over a million volunteers from every state in the nation and every imaginable religious group have headed to NOLA in the last two years to pull it out of the mud. I'm guessing they've done more than all the federal FEMA dollars and reelected-Nagin nonsense combined. And I think that is under reported.

4068

Al Qaeda's Travel Agent

Be sure to check out Joe Lieberman's opinion piece in the WSJ today. He says,

When Congress reconvenes next month, we should set aside whatever differences divide us on Iraq and send a clear and unambiguous message to the Syrian regime. . .

His suggestion is that we stop all flights into Damascus International to close off Al Qaeda's supply line and stop the murders in Iraq. Of course, it really is a no brainer. However, we've learned since 9/11 that Democrats have no interest in protecting us or the Iraqi people, they only want to bring down the Bush administration. Bush is the #1 enemy, is their rant, and they are sticking with it. Anything that makes sense even from a fellow Democrat, doesn't stand a chance.

Now it's all about bridges

Within 12 hours of the collapse of the bridge on Interstate 35W in Minneapolis, the kooks and krazies of the Daily Kos, the blogger behemoth to which Democratic presidential candidates are all rushing (especially John Edwards), were blaming George Bush and the Republicans. Now the johnny-come-latelies of the MSM are trotting out, "if only we weren't in Iraq, we'd have enough to repair our falling down bridges." They don't blame the "experts" who have been doing the inspections, or the report in 2001 by the U. of MN that said the bridge had years of service left. Each inspection seemed to call for more reports and inspections; none called for its closing. They don't blame the engineers. They don't blame the Congress who doles out the Highway Trust Fund from our gasoline taxes. They don't blame our rush to bio-fuels which will defund that Fund. They don't blame the wall of red tape snarling local, state and federal agencies responsible for highway safety. Nope. It's all in the power of the president/king/emperor George.

I looked at the list of bridge failures since 1980 in the USAToday. All seemed to be human error (barges or boats hitting them) or caused by earthquakes. None were on the list to watch, that I know of. I've been hearing stories for 20 years that the infrastructure of our cities was crumbling, but that George Bush is so powerful, his hand can reach backward.