For the last two years, President Barack Obama has behaved like a toddler regarding his predecessor. He inherited a mess, everything was his predecessor’s fault, and it will take him forever to clean up the mess that was left for him.
Actually, that is more accurate if one is describing Congressman Ed Royce of California, who takes the Financial Services Committee Chairmanship from Barney Frank.
Congressman Royce recently missed a function because it was his wedding anniversary. The audience was glad that he was with his wife, and celebrated this. As for where Barney Frank sleeps at night, I have zero interest. My problem with him is that he was sleeping on the job. His Fannie was in a hammock when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were collapsing.
As for having to clean up a mess, John Boehner has a gigantic job to do fixing the reign of error that was the Pelosiraptor.
So when liberals complain that the economy collapsed on President George W. Bush’s watch, correct them. The economy was fine when Republicans controlled everything from 2002 to 2006. Voters kicked them out in 2006 because of sex scandals and the War on Iraq. No revisionist history will undo the fabulous economy under the Bush Republicans from 2002 to 2006.
Then the Pelosiraptor and Barney Frankenstein took over, and to use their own metaphor, “drove the economy into the ditch.”
It happened on their watch.
I pointed this out a few weeks ago, and several pointed out that it was unfair (like liberals are ever fair toward conservatives) to say that the collapse should be blamed on Congressional liberals just because they controlled things. After all, If liberals take over on January 4th, 2007, and hypothetically things collapse on January 5th (not the timeline, just an example), it would be unfair to blame them just because they happened to be there at that moment.
Fine. All I ask is that liberals for once in their sniveling liberal, ideologically-bigoted lives adopt a consistent set of standards. Stop changing the rules to make the outcome always read that liberals are virtuous angels and conservatives are the evils of this world. It is boring already.
Here are some examples of liberals trying to rewrite history because things happened on “”somebody’s watch.”
9/11 happened on George W. Bush’s watch, so it is all his fault. The complete and utter neglect of foreign policy during the Clinton years is totally whitewashed. Can one liberal out there place any of the blame for 9/11 on Clinton?
How about Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, the bombings of the Tanzania and Kenya embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole? Does anybody associated with Bill Clinton get an ounce of blame?
George W. Bush dealt with a terror problem that had been not dealt with properly for 30 years.
Let’s talk domestic policy. The recession of 1990-1991 happened on the watch of President George Herbert Walker Bush, so it was his fault. The economy improved under Bill Clinton, so naturally he saved us all.
This is totally false. The economy was already recovering when he took office. GDP was a spectacular 7% in the fourth quarter of 1992, before one single Clinton policy ever became law. So shouldn’t HW Bush get the credit? The improvement happened on his watch.
The economy improved under Newt Gingrich’s watch, since he had much more to do with domestic policy than Bill Clinton after 1994. Also, the internet revolution, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Bill Clinton, created an economy that benefited people.
In 1991 the Berlin Wall came down. It happened on the watch of HW Bush. Yet Ronald Reagan gets more credit than his successor because Reagan was seen as setting things in motion.
(Ever the gentleman, HW Bush cost himself poll points down the line by refusing to take a victory lap. This notion of sharing credit is lost on liberals.)
Both Bush Sr. and Clinton raised taxes. Shouldn’t they both be treated the same?
(They are by conservatives on this issue.)
Why are Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts criticized? Why is JFK treated by liberals like a God? JFK was the original tax-cutting supply-sider (after Calvin Coolidge of course).
Why was cutting the capital gains tax proper under Bill Clinton but improper under George W. Bush? How can the exact same policy be laudable when a Democrat does it but terrible when a Republican does?
(I was consistent. They were both right to cut it, and Clinton actually cut it deeper.)
LBJ brought the military in to integrate the schools, and passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yet despite LBJ doing the work, JFK gets all the credit. It happened on LBJ’s watch, and JFK sold minorities down the river to get his foreign policy implemented.
(RFK was passionate about civil rights, but Jack did not share Bobby’s passion.)
So why does LBJ not get credit? Because he escalated the Vietnam war. Despite being the poster child for liberalism, being a foreign policy hawk makes him Dick Cheney, earning the hatred of liberals. They really are that nuts.
How about Barack Obama and Joe Biden taking a victory lap (unlike HW Bush, they love taking credit for everything) over Iraq? The situation was fixed due to the surge that George W. Bush backed and they opposed. Biden wanted to partition Iraq into three separate nations.
So on the economy, Obama is able to say that he inherited a mess. Yet in Iraq, he inherited exactly the opposite. Bush handled it so Obama would not have to do so.
How about President George W. Bush getting blame for Katrina in 2005? We all know the biggest screwups were a pair of liberal Democrats, Louisiana Governor Kathleen “I’m so overwhelmed” Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray “Chocolate City” Nagin. Tragedy and incompetence happened on their watch. Haley Barbour handled things, proving that one should never send a liberal to do an adult’s job.
There are plenty more examples.
I am just trying to explain to liberals that not everything is black and white.
Is it fair to blame every single aspect of the financial collapse on the Pelosiraptor and Barney Frankenstein?
No. Yet shouldn’t they get some of the blame? Perhaps more than zero?
This was an unprecedented situation. No human saw it coming. George W. Bush is human (despite liberal protesting). So maybe isn’t it unfair to blame him just because it happened on his watch?
Or do we blame Barack Obama for the oil explosion since that happened on his watch?
(Liberals blame George W. Bush for that because he used to work in the oil industry.)
Liberals are normally so obsessed with nuance, yet when dealing with Republicans they prefer the black and white approach of unilateral carpet-bombing.
(It would be nice if they supported that against real enemies and not political opponents, but the left gets these two groups backward).
George W. Bush acted presidential. He faced problems far worse than anything Barack Obama has had to deal with. He kept his mouth shut and his head down. He didn’t whine every five minutes about the financial collapse Bill Clinton left him in 2000.
I do not blame Clinton for the bursting of the dot com bubble. Yet he takes credit for the booming economy caused by the internet revolution while taking zero blame for the eventual collapse. Conversely, liberals blame George W. Bush for the housing collapse, even accusing him of racism since a disproportionate share of the defaulters were black. Yet he gets zero credit when black home ownership was at an all time high in 2007. It is logical that if one group of people takes part in a speculative boom, that they are hurt most by the bust. The people who avoided tech stocks on the way up did not lose money in them on the way down.
So from now on when Barack Obama insists that everything on God’s green (without environmental wacko assistance) Earth is George W. Bush’s fault because it happened on his watch, I will respond with Pelosinomics.
The Republicans had the car at the top of the shining city on a hill. Liberal Democrats in 2006 drove it straight into the ground. Barack Obama is less interested in fixing the car than making sure that conservatives get crushed under it.
We want to fix problems. He wants to assign blame.
The blame is with him and the liberal Democrats.
Now John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell need to drag the First Crybaby in Chief kicking and screaming into sensible policies as Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour did in 1994 with Bubba.
Mr. Obama will try and take credit if those policies succeed, and blame the GOP if his obstructionism causes failure and paralysis.
History will vindicate Republicans as it always does (Ronald Reagan), with my modest help of course.
Time to rip the gavel out of the Pelosiraptor and Barney Frankenstein’s hands and actually accomplish something positive. Actually by firing them, something positive has already happened.
Happy morning in America. The adults are back in charge.
Of course, Barack Obama could and should take credit for the Republican victories. They happened on his watch.
eric
His (Barney Frank’s) Fannie was in a hammock when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were collapsing.”
If by “a hammock” you mean IN THE MINORITY, then you’d be correct. Frank was the senior ranking member on the committe, but he was still in the MINORITY, yet Republicans insist on blaming him for the F&F debacle. It is sleazy and dishonest. Yes, some years ago, Frank was convinced that F&F were working just fine and that’s what F&F was telling everyone. When a few investers started hedging against the housing boom, and a few big banks and investment firms got on board, Frank and others were quick to realize that F&F had been backing bad loans, often with bad information (and you can’t blame F&F for that, for as with Frank, they were simply acting on the information they had). Frank and the then Republican committee chair drafted a bill to rein in F&F and it was blocked mostly by Republicans in the senate.
If Republicans can’t own the mistakes they made that contributed to this messy economy then they are doomed to make the mess worse, or even pile a whole new mess on top of this one. It’s time for Republicans to act like honorable, mature men and women and own the mess they made. If they don’t, and the mess gets worse, the Tea Party will abandon them, mush of their base will lose hope in them, and this will be the shortest GOP majority in US history.
You keep insisting that Obama is behaving like a “toddler” for reminding everyone of who was in charge when this mess was created, yet you have the audacity ti blame him for everything bad under the sun even though it all happened before he was president and the Dems took the majority! Why? Don’t you see the hypocrisy in this? Who’s really behaving like a toddler here – Obama, who is simply reminding us of the facts, or you Republicans who apparently don’t remember anything beyond four years ago?
JMJ
Pelosi is whacking Boehner for crying.
Didnt she cry over rhetoric that reminded her of the 70s ?
Who cares, we all knew she was faking it anyway.
” yet you have the audacity ti blame him for everything bad under the sun even though it all happened before he was president and the Dems took the majority! Why? Don’t you see the hypocrisy in this? Who’s really behaving like a toddler here – Obama, who is simply reminding us of the facts, or you Republicans who apparently don’t remember anything beyond four years ago?”
Uhhh, last I checked, it was him who voted with the 111th congress to extend housing/loans to people who couldnt afford it. Even after McCain and Bush both told Frank, Dodd, Schumer that the CRA had created a monster over the decades ready to explode. Frank said “nah, its cool, theres no problem” (paraphrasing)
I’ve shown you the congressional transcripts, yet like some parrot with ADD you keep saying the same crap.
Sure, big spending and government growth happened under both parties.
But the bleeding heart entitlement left took the cake…literally.
Pi$$ing away 3 trillion in 2 years with pretty much nothing to show for it didnt happen 4 years ago.
Of course hes acting like a toddler.
Name me one president thats bashed and blamed his predecessor 1/2 as much as Obama has, if at all.