Let me just point out that which has gone unremarked--before I get into specific responses to the torrent of idiocy posted in this discussion—there was in fact NO JOB LOSS IN AUGUST 2008, what was initially reported as a loss in August was revised to a substantial gain when the final readings came out in October.

Now for the other utterly nonsense:

Really? “Balloon”? The publicly held national debt as a percentage of GDP (the ONLY economically meaningful measure of the debt) since reaching a 20 year low of 33% in fiscal 2001 reached a 37.4% in fiscal 2005 before beginning to decline again (to 37.0 in fiscal 2006 and below 36.8% for fiscal 2007).

So first of all, you’re basic premise is absolutely false on two counts (one somewhat subjective, the other completely objective:

The national debt has not “ballooned” at all, having risen less than 3.8% over a six year period (if you considered that “ballooning” than you had better be prepared to similarly cite the “ballooning” growth in our economy in the last quarter despite all your doom and gloom”)

Second, even if the net increase since 2001 could be reasonably described as having “ballooned” it is flat out false to say “continues” since it has actually been DECLINING for the last two years, and is projected to continue its decline. All of this during a period of admittedly grotesque increases in spending (I am no defender of the Bush administration or the previous Republican Congress on their abysmal record on domestic discretionary spending).

Clinton inherited a robust economy from Bush 41, while leaving an economy falling into recession to Bush 43 (go check the growth rates in the 12 months preceding both Clinton and Bush 43’s taking office)

Furthermore, The most stellar job growth of the Clinton years actually coincided with relatively restrained spending growth by the GOP led Congress before they went native, and following substantial capital gains tax reductions (which resulted in capital gains tax revenue collections that far exceeded pre-rate cut projections). So yes, it was in fact spending restraint and tax cuts pushed down Clinton’s throat by the GOP that led to the strong growth of the late 1990s

Not true, the economic strength of the economy overall in the late 1990s was real, and heardly ended in a “hard-core recession”. While it is true that there was a speculative bubble in the “Tech” stocks, this was only a small part of the overall economic story. And the recession you call “hard-core” was the shortest and mildest of the last century; so short and shallow that many economists speculate that it may not have been officially a recession (it is so close that it is within the historic margin of error for the data sets involved)

In what fantasy land are you living where consumer spending is “WAAAAY down”:



As this chart clearly shows, while the rate of INCREASE in consumer spending, net consumer spending has not actually decreased in over 17 years:

Another baseless liberal urban myth. I count it as irrefutable “job growth” when the following occur simultaneously:

- Increase in the total number of people in the workforce
- Decrease in the unemployment rate

An employeed person who gets a second job does not result in reductions in the unemployment rate…DUH!


First of all, the Fed lowered rates because rates were too high based on the fact that core inflation has plummeted and the overriding concern became the growth rate (although based on the data of the last week this concern is somewhat overblown as well)

Second, the lower rates sure have seemed to bail out the mortgage holders very well, with huge write down in their current financial reporting.

There is no “looting” of the “ss trust”, there never has been a “trust”, it was “looted” from day one, and was designed to be by the great FDR.

As for the cost of the war, that is less than 10% of the entire Federal Budget (even less of government spending at all levels). It is also less than 1.5% of our 13.2 TRILLION dollar economy.

You are making a rather pedantic error. While it is correct that GDP is calculated on “transactions”, you are utterly wrong in equating the definition of that term in economics with that in accounting. The economic meaning of that word is much broader and inclusive than the rather limited “bean counting” definition in the accounting profession.

You also confuse the issue of economic growth with government finances. While the overall economic and monetary policy of the government has a substantial impact on economic growth, they are separate and distinct issues.

Well, the economy has actually INCREASED its growth rate as the real estate bubble has been deflating. And as noted above, even the reported single month decline in jobs reported in August which has caused the usual left-wing dance of joy on the supposed-grave of the U.S. economy turned out to be completely and utterly WRONG!


Not only am I willing to ignore that chart, my most basic knowledge of economics requires that I ignore it, and look instead at the fact that the only meaningful measure of the national debt (publicly held debt as a % of GDP) has actually declined substantially since 1946 (when the publicly held debt was 108% of GDP), falling to about 33.8% in fiscal 2007 (a number below the 40.5% 20-year average—a 20 year period of historic combined growth and prosperity


First of all, unemployment is at a rate which used to be believed to be close to “full employment”, and is also currently below the average rate of the last 20 years.

GDP? Well, that is at 3.9% in Q3, up slightly from 3.8% in Q2, up dramatically from .6% in Q1. So, GDP growth in the last 9 months (when everything has supposedly been getting progressively worse) has improved dramatically.

Well, we have had steady increases in both employment and GDP (GDP up 3.8 and 3.9% respectively in the last 2 quarters).


You are being to kind. The lefties are going orders of magnitude beyond “cherry picking” and are picking lusch delicious cherry’s only to ignore what they have picked, picking out the pit and declaring that as their find!. This economy is strong, incredibly resilient, and this is not, as I have said before just a Bush story, this is a story going back a quarter of a century now, to the Reagan tax cuts which put us on a path of historic growth and prosperity. A period with only two of the shortest and shallowest recessions in history. The last one so short and shallow the lefties had to make up entirely new and absurd ideas to try to make it look bad by comparison. Remember the “jobless recovery” of the early ‘00s? It was one of the biggest snowjobs ever. While it was true that the rate of job growth coming out of the last recession was substantially lower than in previous recessions, it was not because of the sub-par rebound, it was due entirely to the fact that the recession Bush inherited was virtually devoid of job loss compared to prior recessions. In prior recessions unemployment shot up to double digits, in the last recession it barely got above 6%. Or look at it this way, one year after the end of the last recession, unemployment was less than 6% while one year after most of the other recessions of the last 60 years unemployment was above 8-9% and sometimes in double digits.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane