Why It’s Worse Than You Think

Thankfully we've had Republican proposals to keep the downturn as small as it has been the last few years. Most people look at the current state of the economy and blame the US President for every problem, which is not the direction we should be looking. Instead of looking at the economy as a whole, to judge a President we should look at the contributions of that particular administration. For example, Clinton benefited from the technology boom, primarily boosting us due to events in Japan. Regardless of Clinton's actions, we saw a boost, and no President could take away the huge improvements we saw. However, what Clinton's proposals did was limit that boost, taking what would have been a great boost and making it only a good boost. Bush, or rather his economists, have taken a negative world economy, influences outside the realm of US control such as oil prices (we contribute app. 4% to the cost per barrel, mere change), and minimized the impact, allowing to have things such as almost the cheapest gas in the world right now. A good President under a good economy will make a great economy, while a bad President under a good economy will keep it at only a good economy. A good President under a bad economy will still suffer through a bad economy, but can minimize the impact from world influnces, as is happening in this case. A bad President under a bad economy would just cripple us all. I shudder to think of what would have happened if things had been reversed, if Bush had been in office during the technology boom and we had to suffer through Clinton through the bad times. The middle class would be practically wiped for certain, we suffered through a recession in 2001 because his ridiculous proposals hadn't yet expired. And the moron managed to convince people that it was a Republican's fault, someone who had just entered office and hadn't even done anything yet. The fact that people still buy into that astounds me. Bush is an idiot, but his proposals and the work of his economists have really lessened the impact we're feeling compared to the rest of the world, seriously lessened the impact from increased Chinese demand and other factors, and for that very reason we cannot afford a Democrat to come back to office in these harsh times. We can only afford a Democrat when the world is giving us a huge boost, but history has proven that 100% of the time we suffer even more greatly when times are bad. The economy itself as a whole is not a deciding factor on the worth of a mere US President, it's the contributions to that world economy and how it affects the US that show a measure. Reducing a negative impact, or taking advantage of a positive impact, we've seen both over the past few years, after seeing neither during the previous few.

Here's some change you can believe in: the amount of times McCain has changed his values and positions on the issues.

The reason half of the conservative Christian right hates McCain is because they think that they can't trust him. McCain started his career as part of the Christian right (there's a little-known fact). Once he landed in the soup as part of the Keating Five (which almost derailed his career) he positioned himself as a liberal and became a reformer for campaign finance in an effort to resurrect himself. For those of you who don't remember, the Keating scandal had to do with some shim sham corporations pumping money into McCain's coffers. So McCain became a reformer to shine up his tarnished image, and that was his first departure from the right.

Other, more serious betrayals of the right came later, after McCain got swift boated by Bush in 1999. The great Texas Republican political machine laid McCain to waste, and McCain was mad as hell. He started voting against the party line and against Bush. He suddenly supported abortion rights, opposed the Bush tax cuts, co-sponsored a patient's bill of rights with Kennedy and Edwards, and got on the environmental bandwagon with John Kerry. My gosh, he even tried to crack down on gun shows in legislation he put forth with then-Democrat Joe Lieberman. And in 2001, when Senator Jeffords of Vermont switched from Republican to Independent in an effort to counteract Bush's stranglehold on the Senate, McCain announced that he was considering becoming a Democrat, and went into a pow-wow with Senator Tom Daschle at his Sedona ranch. And did you know that John Kerry floated the idea of having McCain as his VP in '04? That was to have cemented his status as a newly-minted Democrat.

But instead of joining Kerry, McCain suddenly switched his affiliation, came out in support of Bush in '04, and jettisoned his liberal image. Suddenly, it was the "old" McCain from the 1980s back in the saddle, the neo-conservative, take no prisoners Creationist. Against abortion. For the war. The SAME man who opposed a Federal amendment banning gay marriage and openly met with gay groups now was pushing a gay marriage ban in Arizona. The SAME man who said in 1999 that he was opposed to overturning Roe vs. Wade, now suddenly in 2007 is promising that he will stack the deck in the Supreme Court with religious right judges and overturn Roe vs. Wade.

But the religious right isn't so sure about him. He's supported so many different opposing positions at so many times, that they are afraid that they are getting played in the name of McCain's political expediency.

Here are videos that show clips of McCain reversing himself on the same issues at different times, to give you an idea of what I am talking about. Don't believe me -- get it straight from the horse's mouth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajm5JTf7jZs&feature=related

The Democrats will blame Bush and the Republicans will blame the Democratic Congress. The fact is we have had good economic times during the first 6 years of Bush and a Republican Congress and a slow down started about a year after the Dems took over both houses of Congress. But I don't blame either because recessions come in cycles and we are overdue for one.

Dr Man... and you are the most generous people in the world??? So tell me, how come do you reject social programs so much???? How many millions do you need to be happy??? How does it feel to be rich and surounded by poor people?? Do you feel any guilt about having so much and see so many with so little?? You greed is unbelievable! No when a country is not able to offer health care to all, I do not call it a generous country!! You like so many are so damn selfish!!

Let's see, we have a MAJORITY democratic senate....Pelosi and "there's a new sheriff in town" slogan has taken us on a downward spiral, gas at record prices, groceries climbing week to week, when's the new sheriff gonna put a lid on it??..One can only fear having a democrat president...GOD HELP US

Just so many bad decisions made in the last seven years that affect todays economy. This will take effort and sacrifice of all. Roll up the sleeves.

How much are those CEO's making? What the ratio to an ordinary Joe?

I have a feeling that the Brians of the world would be screaming from the roof tops that it was their man/party who was responsible for the good times. THIS OF COURSE WOULD BE IF THERE WAS ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT THE PAST 7 YEARS. THERE REALLY ISN'T ONE THING HE CAN BRAG ABOUT.

They can only say it's not their fault. Pitiful.

All the left-wingers keep on praying for economic recession so they can blame it on Bush. Lets face it, everything was fine until that piece of sh*t democrat congress came along and screwed everything up with their uncontrollable spending and economic policies. Notice how the country's economic troubles only came about over the last 2 years. Marxism at its best, what else can I say.

"We need someone in office who will confront the problems and come up with viable solutions" said Onepoker. And that would be? McCain is an old man who doesn't know the difference between Shia and Sunni, but who wants to start a third war in Iran, who admitted publicly that he doesn't know much about the economy, and who thinks wiretapping Americans is a dandy idea, showing me that he doesn't have a clue about our Constitution and the democracy it protects. Even Republicans have admitted that Bush lied us into war, and Bush, himself, has admitted that he has been illegally wire tapping Americans since 9/11.

There isn't a day goes by when this thought doesn't cross my mind: What will the Onepokers on the Right do when they find out that the Bush government they so stridently supported for the past 7+ years has simply been using them to get elected and rich. By then, it will be too late to do anything about it!

Have you been so brain washed that you no longer have any common sense, or understand the difference between right and wrong? I feel sorry for you!

It doesnt make any sense of intelligent arguments at all,
Im wondering why someone with only High School Education background can be better President than those who's having a PHD education like Obama.As he is constitution scholar?While John McCain stand as Candidate in 2008 not even university graduate to be a President.Even Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President of the United States 1861-1865,a Republican,was a Graduated in Law when he was the President.

All you have to do is look at the jews. I hate to say it but it was Milton Freidman that exported our job in free trade, it was alan greenspan that gave us our bubbles, it was thomas freidman that sold our world is flat idea, it was the jewish zionist neocons that put us in Afghanistan and Iraq thus exploding our deficits and crashing our dollar. Has their ever been a problem that this nation has faced in the last 50 years that hasnt had the fingers of jews destroying our nation for the benefit of their own race.

As this country faces its crisis we need to deport US jews to Isreal and resolve our illegal immigrant crisis by making states of Central America and mexico.