Yea Mark how dare we support a President with 35% approval ratings who is making things like this happen.

How dare we choose not to support a Congress with an 11% APPROVAL that couldn't do this ever.

But I am sure soon as the libs get here they will find the black lining in our silver cloud.

Thanks again for the GOOD news.

Did anyone hear Zarkozys speech?

He thanked Americans for liberating France and mentioned that they are forever in debt to America for that, and that every time an American soldier is killed, Zarkozy thinks of Frances liberation and the liberation of others at the hands of Americans.

Why can't the Democrats say that? Oh that's right, because to the left, America is the oppressor.

Those are certainly laudable achievements for President Bush but his attempts at major policy goals of immigration reform and social security reform failed miserably. As of right now I think most people who aren't neocon, spook, kahn, kiefer et al., would agree that President Bush's time has been a disappointment. That may change if Iraq becomes a beacon of democracy in the middle east, but that history will be written long after he is dead. I hope history proves him right.

More great news that will be ignored by the left. Has anyone noticed that every time Harry Reid-tard mentions Iraq, he says "civil war?" I guess this is what his handlers over at MorOn and DailyKooks demand he say. Check out the kookfest over at americablog.com--they want him gone; they want Pelosi gone, and Schumer and Feinstein as well. And if Conyers doesn't move forward with Kookspinich's impeachment of Cheney, they want him gone too. These people are sufferin' from terminal BDS.

neocon, I heard some of it on Limbaugh's show today--Viva La France!

gene,

I doubt much that President Bush's Administration will be judged in history vis a vis SS reform and immigration/border security. Be that as it may, those two major initiatives did come a cropper for the President, though not through lack of his being willing to stick his neck out for his proposals.

For SS reform, the Congressional GOP figured that on the issue they would be better off without joining the President on reform...'cause this would help them retain Congress in 2006. Best laid plans of mice and men, huh? Might as well have gone to the mat on it and stuck to GOP principle - might have even saved a few GOP seats by having a more enthused GOP base for November of last year. Cowardice and stupdity are the most ruthlessly and swiftly punished actions a person can take.

On SS reform, the President is right in both cold policy terms and in warm and fuzzy moral terms - the GOP base is wrong on this...of course, the Dem base with its de-facto open borders nonsense is also wrong. President Bush and John McCain stood forward with courage on the issue - but they fell afoul of the people's reasonable mistrust that the enforcement aspects would gain full attention as promised.

Of course, a full understanding of the Bush Administration is beyond us - passions are too strong, and we're too close to the events to be able to view them with detachment. I think - given my extensive knowledge of history - that in 50 years President Bush will be ranked at least with FDR, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan...and may even aspire to the rarified company of Lincoln and Washington; but I don't know this, and I can't know this.

err...that is, on immigration reform, the President is right and the GOP base is wrong...preview is our friend

Mark-

The only way in which GWB gets into the rarified air of Lincoln and Washington is if Iraq does become that beacon of liberty I spoke of earlier and then that liberty spreads across the middle east. This will take at least 100 years I suspect, if it happens at all. I truly hope it does happen though the world will probably be half under water by then with global warming and all ;).

You and I agree on immigration. It was the right thing to try, something must be done, and mass deportations aren't it. I think the GOP's base is on the losing end of that argument and it will hurt them in coming elections.

God bless you President George W. Bush, the greatest president in american history.

Bush's "accomplishments" you forgot to mention:

Katrina
Abu Ghraib
$3 Trillion added to National Debt
Medicare Drug Program costs
Illegal Wiretapping
Alberto Gonzalez
Harriet Myers
Social Security
Immigration non-reform
Housing collapse
Profits over the Environment

.....wow, just gettin warmed up!

-LiberalMind

What does worker productivity have to do with anything related to the policies of GWB?

And what does the president of France having nice things to say about the USA have to do with the policies of GWB?

SDI is another corporate welfare boondoggle that preys on the anxieties of Americans. It might work in staged tests, but in the real world will be easily foiled by the most basic technology. In any case, technical ability to shoot down missiles in staged tests has what to do with the governance of GWB, who can barely spell "missile"?

The drop in chronic homelessness has been achieved largely at the municipal level, where the idea was pioneered years ago in cities like DC, Philadelphia, and SF to provide permanent housing rather than temporary flop houses (did you actually read the article?). These initiatives far pre-dated the Bush admin, and were enacted by Democratic mayors and city councils. When has Bush ever considered lessening chronic homelessness as an important economic goal of his administration?

In the meantime, under W's bumbling, the dollar is at all times lows against all the major world currencies, a hefty surplus was turned into heftier deficits, enormous debts are owed to China which is beginning to divest itself of dollars, the gap between rich and poor has ballooned to levels not seen since the guilded age, oil is about to hit all time highs of over $100 a barrel, credit markets are in turmoil and threaten to throw us into renewed recession, job creation has remained the lowest of any president since Hoover despite massive injections of capital by the Feds, and inflationary pressures from sinking dollar and high oil prices cannot be countered with interest rate cuts.

Throw in the greatest foreign policy blunder since Vietnam, and I think historians will judge W to stand for "Worst President Ever".

Aaron is off his meds again. Productivity up, homeless down, tax revenues up, inflation down, stock market up (overall), unemployment down, exports are up, democrats are down. Economy is roaring, democrats are pandering and all’s right with the world.

All they need now to make them euphoric is total defeat in Iraq.

Cheer yourself up, attend the Draft Gore Concert, Run Al Run oh wait … cancelled due to lack of interest.

Bwahahahahaha!

Errortime would fault Bush on absolutely everything he did, tried to do, or wanted to do. It is that mindless knee-jerk spasm of BDS that marks the true radical Lib, the footsolider of the neosocialists.

This is what you get when you have an agenda that is not issue-oriented, not policy-oriented, not based on personal philosophy regarding actual government, but is merely a hyper-emotional indulgence with its roots in how one FEELS about another person.

Which is why we think the radical Left is terminally silly.

"Chronic homelessness has declined."
Ok, I'll give you that one. Sounds like good news.

"Productivity is way up."
Ok, another good sign, although with the price of oil jumping up again and and the DOW dropping, I'm not sure where the economy is going.

"The President of France has nice things to say about us."
So when the former president of France was saying bad things Bush was doing bad? I thought we didn't care what the rest of the world thought of us.

"SDI is becoming ever more effective."
That's nice, but we don't have any enemies with missiles that can hit us. I would be much happier to know our ports were secured.

"A school opens in Iraq where terrorists used to rule."
I wonder how the numbder of schools in Iraq open now compares with the number open before Bush took office.

The economy is roaring?? Yeah, like your house on fire. 1 in 4 vets are homeless, even though they only occupy 11% of the population. I'm sorry, I forgot...support the troops.
The stock market dropped almost 400 points today and the same last Friday but I will give Dasien a nod, it is up YTD: a whopping 6+%. Big whoop there.
The dollar is at an all time low, China wants to divest itself of American debt, GM lost 39 BILLION dollars in the 3rd quarter alone and yet Mark still tries to rally the troops which are becoming more and more sparse. Bush's approval numbers are now in Richard Nixon territory but when you blindly support someone this kind of tripe is what you get.
Whose johnson will you felate next Noonan?
If you lost some weight, it could be your own.

given my extensive knowledge of history

I love this bit. If you have such "extensive" knowledge of history, then why do you get so much of it wrong?

All I can say is vote for Ron Paul, the only actual Republican in the race. Everyone else is just a mutant version of what used to be conservatism.

Tract,

Some books I've read:

A Military History of the Western World; The World Crisis; The Two Ocean War; The Story of Civilization; The Guns of August; Goodbye, Darkness; A Bright, Shining Lie; The Great Mutiny; Gulag Archipelago; The Good Years; The Arms of Krupp; American Ceasar; The Boer War; Castles of Steel; Dreadnought; The Fall of the House of Hapsburg; Maria Theresa; Carnage and Culture; Case Closed; The Yom Kippur War; 1967 Israel, the War and the Year that Transformed the Middle East; The Path Between the Seas; Battle Cry of Freedom; Peter the Great; A Noise of War; The Last Lion; Adolf Hitler; War Through the Ages; The Dumb Ox; Kruschev, a Career; Bismarck; The Fall of Saigon; Raj, the Making and Unmaking of British India; End of Empire; The Rise of the West; The Conservative Mind, from Burke to Eliot; The Black Book of Communism; Murder of a Gentle Land; Conquest and Culture; The Death of a President; The First World War; A History of the Second World War; The Collapse of the Third Republic; The Bonaparte’s; The Cold War; The Zimmerman Telegram; Stillwell and the American Experience in China; Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt; In the Shadow of the Winter Palace; A People’s Tragedy, the Russian Revolution 1891-1924; Guerrilla Prince, the Untold Story of Fidel Castro

Its not all - but it is sufficient, I think, to say that anyone who disagrees with me on matters of history has likely got it wrong.

The OZ Principle
I just recently attended one of these corporate offsite learn something about behaviors dog and pony show that taught us about living above the line.

People that live "above the line" process events the following way:

They see it (requires careful observation and fact gathering)
They own it (requires ownership and accountability to find a solution, the best one for the moment and hopefully with long term benefit as another byproduct)
They solve it (they come up with a plan to turn the tide or remedy as best possible the situation)
They do it (the final step of putting all of the above into action)

Those that live below the line exhibit the following behaviors:

They cover their a$$, they blame others, they ignore or deny the situation (and often truth), they accuse others, they pass the buck and a couple of others, but I left my card at the office (you should see a pattern by now).

Regardless of where you stand on the major events, like those listed above by Liberalmind, the story is best told by watching how it is handled and shutup about the event itself. There will be plenty of time later to do a careful evaluation of what actually happened.

I learned a long time ago that it is not events that make the man but how the man handles them.

GWB exemplifies character at a level that is so far from his enemies that they don't even realize how immature or out of touch they sound..but that of course is a primary symptom of being delusional.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "When GWB took office, gas was $1.48." So?

Don't forget this success story

S&P 500 Annualized Total Return (%)
17.4% Bill Clinton
17 % Gerald R. Ford
15.6 % Harry S. Truman
14.9% Dwight D. Eisenhower
14.4% Ronald Reagan
14.4% George H. W. Bush
12.4% John F. Kennedy
11.2% Jimmy Carter
10.2 % Lyndon B. Johnson
1.2% George W. Bush 2001-Nov 2007
0.6% Richard M. Nixon

Close immediately after Bush takes office January 20, 2001:
S&P 500: 1,342.90

Today 1,475.62

Mark
I am glad you have read history books, Mark the conclusion that there is a "right" and "wrong" about history illustrates you have a misunderstanding of the study of history. The people you say are "wrong" may simply have another interpretation of events. They may have read different books than you that took a different perspective on history.

The only thing you can get wrong about history is if you omit, add or change facts. An interpretation of the facts cannot be objectively wrong.

An example:
I gleaned from your previous posts you feel we could have won Vietnam. Even if you don't, you admit that there are many people who believe this. Now, Robert MacNamara believes now we could not have won that war. That we embarked on an impsooible task. He is not wrong. You are not wrong. The question is, who has the better argument for their interpretation. Ultimately, I have to go with MacNamara. No matter how many books you read, you will never have the depth and understanding of the conflict that he has. Therefore, in my opinion, he likely has a better interpretation of the facts.

So there you go, Mark. Your bookreading may give you a basis on which to base your interpretation but it can't make that interpretation "right."

God bless you President George W. Bush, the greatest president in american history.

Posted by: james allegro at November 7, 2007 06:37 PM

You never give up, eh, james. I think even the most ardent of Bush supporters here would have a hard time calling him "the greatest" of all your Presidents. Surely to Betsy, you have had even one who was greater. If not, my most sincere condolences.

1 in 4 vets are homeless, even though they only occupy 11% of the population. I'm sorry, I forgot...support the troops.

As usual, Alex, in your haste to emphasize the negative, you got your facts WRONG!!! 1 in 4 homeless persons is a Vet. Still not something of which to be proud, but a far cry from what you wrote.

Keep up the good work, James!

Everybody should be saying it-

God bless you President George W. Bush, The Greatest President in American and world history!!! Afterall, we are living the last few months as him being our actual President! I think everyone needs to have pitch in, and have him a great big going away gathering, Just the way he would have it. A big Texas grillin' out!!

I'm going to miss him, as many of you will too!!

I really appreciate you, James, you've always kept positive thoughts and words, Which is hard for me to do most of the time, because of the Liberal sickness that is inherent in the Leftist community.

Jeremiah

Why do people think the president runs the economy? I think this comes from Clinton, every time some indication of a good economy came out he would hold a press confrence. Just something that irks me sometimes.

Anyways an analysis of what Bush did have control over doesn't look as good. We now have over 70 trillion dollars in obligations, 9 trillion in debt and 2.2 trillion is foreign debt. We have a account of over 800 billion a year. Discretionary spending has increased over 60% and there's no signs of it slowing down. Average government spending at all levels is aproaching 50% of GDP. With the fall of the dollar, if foreigners decide they're on the margin, or to divest themselves, of dollars denominated assets, without that borrowing competition what's going to happen to interest rates? We allready pay a ridiculous sum on interest every year. What do you think happens to a country that is spending 8+% interest rates on a debt that almost as high as it's GDP coupled with another 50% on other spending?

Iran and Venezuala are now selling oil for euros, Russia is talking about creating a new Bretton-Woods type system to insulate the world from an uncertian dollar.

If any country but us, with our finances, asked the IMF or World Bank for help, they would laugh at us and turn us down or force major reform.

Government's have destroyed more societies by mismanaging their money than by war, and don't think that it can't and won't happen to us. Our government seriously needs to get it's finances in order. We only have like 2% real GDP growth a year, it's 2% of alot, but 2% is nothing impressive.

Somehow I left out a word above...

have a account DEFICIT of over 800 billion a year

Mark,
Impressive list of books. I would call it a nice start. Others you might consider reading are: 1776, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Miracle at Philadelphia, The Icon and the Axe, 1491, and Plutarch's Lives. I would also suggest you read a few primary sources such as some of Caesar's Commentaries, Columbus' Journals, or Ben Franklin's Autobiography.

What,

No, there is a thing called "truth", and it can be discovered. McNamara is wrong to say that Vietnam could not be won...and if he believed that when he started the battle, then he should be tried for treason and murder. Anyone who says that Vietnam could not be wrong is either lying, or ignorant...of course, on the flip side, anyone who says WWII could not have been lost is also lying or ignorant.

In my studies of history, I seek out the truth, as best can be determined by fallible human beings - that list I posted was just what I could remember off the top of my head; an exhaustive list would be, well, rather exhaustive to write. One thing I have found in reading history is that the more recently it is written, the worse the skill of the historian...even when you get someone who is a really good writer and a very knoweldgable historian...such as, for instance, Orlando Figues who wrote "A People's Tragedy"...just off the top of the head, one of the passages in that excellent history goes along the lines of "even if we wish to use such values laden judgements", in reference to the savagery of the mobs in revolutionary Russia...what he missed is that failure to use such "values laden" judgements weakens the ability of the historian to arrive at the truth...savagery is savagery, and there's no sense in sugar-coating it. It can be placed in context, it can have mitigating circumstances, but savagery is savagery. Figues, apparantly, wanted to use the "values laden" judgement, but his very modern training in historical studies made him take the weak gambit of pretending he wasn't using it, when he actually was, because in order to tell the truth, you had to note the savagery of the mobs.

To get back to your example, the plain fact of the matter is that the war was won, and then immediately lost - and the primary culprit in the loss was President Johnson, who lacked the moral courage to stick it out to victory when dunces in the media started calling the war lost, and crowds of ignorant kids started demonstrating against the war (sound familiar?). The human factor in history must never be ignored - the ability of even one man to make a remarkable change, for good or ill. Modern historical study tends to ignore that because it is infected with materialism and determinism...which tends to a "it must have happened that way because it happened that way". All too often, in a real study of history, one discovers how often things came within an ace of coming out the opposite of the way they did.

Casper,

"Lives" is interesting, but I haven't been able to plow all the way through it - I much prefer books like "The Great Heresies" or "Ripples of Battle". "Guns, Germs and Steel", from what I've read of it, is a crock of nonsense, so that won't make it on my reading list (limited time to read, not going to bother with a book panned by people who's opinion I respect unless something remarkable comes up about it). I haven't read "1776", but it is on the long list of books I plan on reading. More to the top of the list is "Team of Rivals"...the Civil War becoming ever more interesting to me, these days.

Casper,

Oh, and as for Columbus - not reading his journals, but I am just starting Morrison's "Admiral of the Ocean Seas" biography of the great man.

Okay Mark,
You missed my point. You wrote:

"the plain fact of the matter is that the war was won, and then immediately lost - and the primary culprit in the loss was President Johnson, who lacked the moral courage to stick it out to victory when dunces in the media started calling the war lost, and crowds of ignorant kids started demonstrating against the war (sound familiar?)."

My point was that you cannot be "right" about an historical interpretation. This is your interpretation of the facts. It is not right, nor is it wrong. It is what you believe to be true.
People can either accept it or they can dismiss it.

MacNamara thought as you did when the war started but eventually realized that the war was not going to be won for a variety of reasons. He never thought Johnson was being too soft and he definately never thought the war was won. Who should I believe? You or him? Again, his greater understanding of the war makes his interpretation, in my mind, a better one.

This statement:
"I seek out the truth, as best can be determined by fallible human beings" demonstrates my point.
Those that offer a different perspective are after the truth as well and just as capable as you if not more so of offering insight in to what caused historical events.
My point is: there are many sides to one story and to claim your is a refelction of "the truth" is not possible because it is a subjective assessment.

Another example would be the question: Who started the Cold War? The answer depends on who you ask. All sides have facts which their favor their interpretation. No one side can claim the definitive truth.

"Guns, Germs and Steel", from what I've read of it, is a crock of nonsense, so that won't make it on my reading list"
Too bad, at the very least it is thought provoking.

You might want to move 1776 up on your list. It's a history book that reads like a very good novel.
My own reading is guided to a great extent by what my students are interested in. I cosponcer a History Day Club after school. Last year I was reading about Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, and Pirates. This year I reading about Queen Elizabeth I, Lewis and Clark, and the American Revolution. Plus lots of books every year about western history.

it is sufficient, I think, to say that anyone who disagrees with me on matters of history has likely got it wrong.

Aren't you always blathering about how pride is a sin? I'd think that counts double for false pride considering you regularly reveal carefully cultivated ignorance about very basic history (well, at least you admit above that you won't read books that contradict your carefully cultivated ignorance, so I guess that should count for something). Still think Hitler was a leftist, Marky?