By Hanlon, on September 14th, 2009 at 04:21 PM
 The old phrase comes to mind: numbers don’t lie. If there’s one absolutely fair way to compare two presidencies, it’s to look at statistics at the end of each one. See how things were when they left office.
Do that with Clinton v Bush in terms of income/poverty, and it paints a pretty bleak picture for ol’ Dubya:
Under Clinton, the median income increased 14 per cent. Under Bush it declined 4.2 per cent.
Under Clinton the total number of Americans in poverty declined 16.9 per cent; under Bush it increased 26.1 per cent.
Under Clinton the number of children in poverty declined 24.2 per cent; under Bush it increased by 21.4 per cent.
Under Clinton, the number of Americans without health insurance, remained essentially even (down six-tenths of one per cent); under Bush it increased by 20.6 per cent.
Adding Ronald Reagan’s record to the comparison fills in the picture from another angle.
Under Reagan, the median income grew, in contrast to both Bush the younger and Bush the elder. (The median income declined 3.2 per cent during the elder Bush’s single term.) When Reagan was done, the median income stood at $47, 614 (again in constant 2008 dollars), 8.1 per cent higher than when Jimmy Carter left office in 1980.
There’s also this nifty chart to take a look at:
That would be the debt chart over the last few decades. Look specifically at the spikes that start in 1981 and 2001, as well as the drop from the early 1990′s to 2000.
Fiscal conservatism. Awesome!
By Hanlon, on August 5th, 2009 at 03:55 PM
By Hanlon, on July 22nd, 2009 at 10:37 AM
By Hanlon, on June 11th, 2009 at 01:09 PM
 As right-wing rhetoric amps up (and more people find themselves with extra bullet holes), we’re going to be treated to the claim that conservative anger is either no different or not as severe as left-wing anger during the Bush years. O’Reilly and Olbermann are two sides to the same coin, as the false dichotomy goes.
For the moment, let’s forget where my personal biases lie and just take that claim on its face. I don’t mean taking a bullet point list of wacky things said by Rachel Maddow and lining it up against something or other Neil Cavuto has said. Rather, just sort of an overall examination of the line of attack being thrown at the opposition from combatants A and B.
For the most part, anti-Bush rhetoric didn’t really start up until 2002. Oh yes, many were mad at the way the election turned out, but for the bulk of 2001 it was closer to distanced aversion of the man, opposing his policies but seeing him as more of a lame duck than a “dire threat”. The assumption was we’d grit our teeth and then make sure he was a one-termer like his father.
When the attacks of September 11th happened, two days later Bush’s approval was somewhere in the area of 110%. The PATRIOT Act, despite not having been read, passed overwhelmingly. There was no significant opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan. What little there was came in the form of being annoyed at tactics on the ground; too many civilians killed, that kind of thing. In the wake of a terrible attack on our nation’s soil, the entire country cast aside political parties and decided that what we needed was unity.
It’s not as if in early 2001 there was no indication attacks were coming. We know by now that Richard Clarke was frantically trying to sound the alarms. Bush had his August 6th briefing. The WTC had been bombed in 1993 and an embassy had gone down in 1998, amongst others. Terrorism was a real threat that the Clinton administration was tackling, and yet when the towers fell the country didn’t turn on Bush for failing to protect us.
I ask you now: if Al Qaeda brought down the Washington Monument tomorrow, how many Republicans would pull behind Obama?
It wasn’t until mid-2002 that liberals really started to turn against Bush when the Iraq War idea was floating around. It took a war, a war, for the left to even begin to unite against the President. Even that wasn’t a true unity for years, if it ever became one. As the old saying goes, Democrats are more like cats: very hard to get to do anything.
The right was against Obama in a big way even before he took office. I admit my memory of elections only goes back with any real clarity to 1996, but it seems as though Republicans have come out of the cannon with more vitriol than any president in recent history so early in his first term. To be sure, they hated the Clintons, but it wasn’t until 1994 that the “Gingrich Revolution” really picked up any steam, and it was a few years still before things got to the depths. The impeachment trial was in 1998, liberals didn’t call for impeachment until into Bush’s 2nd term, but there are websites and commentators howling for for Obama’s impeachment already. I saw some back last November, even.
Aside from the speed in which the attacks started up and the general viciousness of them, the very character of the attacks goes beyond the pale. Clinton may have been a morally-bankrupt pervert and Bush an empty-headed warmonger, but that was still limited to the simple need to vote them the hell out of office. The worst attacks on either of those two were limited to the realm of “that person is a bad man to be president!”
In stark contrast, Obama’s strongest detractors (which are increasingly starting to envelope the likes of Rush and, by extension, the rest of the party), aren’t simply saying Obama is the wrong guy to be president. He doesn’t have bad policies. Rather, he’s not an American, and he doesn’t love this country. Clinton being a perv and Bush being a crazy evangelical were one thing, now there are people saying Obama is secretly (secretly!) a Muslim who wasn’t born in the United States and is passing secret (secret!) messages to terrorist states in order to show subservience to them.
This isn’t just a case of vocal opposition to policies or distaste for his character. This is dehumanizing. Making Barack Obama seem like an “other”, a non-American shadowy figure whose very presence is built solely around his inherent desire to kill Americans. He isn’t from this country, he doesn’t worship our God, in fact he’s siding with the enemy and bows to their leaders instead of our flag. As Shep Smith said, how far does one have to go in that direction before they pick up a gun?
What we’re seeing now is different than, honestly, any political opposition I’m familiar with. It’s dangerous because five months into Obama’s first term he’s already been pinned as a man who is in the pocket of Al Qaeda and constitutionally not allowed to be president. With that kind of a base to build upon over the next few years, I can’t imagine how much worse things will be come 2010 or 2012. When the President is that level of danger, how many “patriots” can sit by and just wait for him to force socialism on us before bin Laden is given a spot in the cabinet?
By Hanlon, on April 21st, 2009 at 01:46 PM
Over the past three months, it’s become impossible to even mention Bush without a flood of accusations coming from the right. Obama and the left are “blaming” or “scapegoating” Bush, “smearing” him and “obsessed” with the 43rd president. It’s not hard to find evidence of it, just google Obama, blame, and Bush and you’ll get blog posts and editorials on the topic.
The gist of it is the same: Obama is just dragging his predecessor through the mud. As one of the comments from that FOX article said, “Never before has one administration tried to pile so much hate and blame on the previous one.”
Well, this may be a little ironic, but I’m going to respond to that by… blaming Bush.
We all have a pretty good bead on the various Bush scandals and unethical actions. However, most of them tend to be a “post-9/11″ variety, since that’s when George Walker Bush seemingly came out of his shell and gave us all of our favorite stories: NSA, Iraq, Katrina, etc. One of the famous of the “blaming the predecessor” variety is that of blaming Clinton for 9/11, as this was in curious contradiction to the fact that people didn’t blame Bush Sr for the 1993 WTC attacks.
But there’s one that happened very early in Bush’s tenure that got swept under, and it happen quite literally as soon as he took office. I’m speaking of the story about Clinton completely trashing the White House during the transition. The original Drudge Report article is oddly missing, but we have an article from January 26th, six days into Bush’s term, that outlines the damages.
Some recent press reports suggest Bill Clinton and his crew left behind a different sort of legacy at the White House when they departed Saturday. Weekend reports of Clinton aides gamely popping the “W” off computer keyboards quickly turned to accusations of vandalism, with Matt Drudge reporting that the damage bordered on the criminal — with phone lines slashed, obscenities scrawled on walls, something called “porn bombs” and vulgar messages left on the voice-mail system, among other transgressions. Drudge also reported that the incoming Bush administration is conducting a full investigation of these actions.
That was just the beginning, along with desks glued shut and locks jimmied which trapped officials in their own offices. Ari Fleischer and others played the “we don’t want to play the blame game” game, implicitly confirming the story. After all, if the story was false, it would have been easy to step up to the podium and say “we’ve been here a week and haven’t found anything trashed.”
The story was a Bush team invention, spread through the media to slime the outgoing president. By not actually conducting an investigation, they had the dual benefit of making themselves seem above the fray by “wanting to keep the story quiet”. Unfortunately, Republican Bob Barr didn’t catch on and called for an investigation, which promptly proved that there was no evidence the story happened.
Obama, in his first 100 days, explaining that he has inherited many situations from Bush is not smearing and piling hate on his predecessor. Bush’s crew inventing a BS story about Clinton vandalizing and stealing from the White House before they ran out is. Get it straight.
By Hanlon, on September 2nd, 2008 at 11:32 PM
 It’s taken a while, but I can only say I am supremely impressed with the class with which Hillary Clinton has conducted herself since Obama clinched the nomination. No joke, no sarcasm, she’s really surprised me and I think all of us with how she’s acted lately.
And currently, she’s pissed off at Sarah Palin.
Mrs. Clinton’s friends said she was galled that Ms. Palin might try to capitalize on a movement that Mrs. Clinton, of New York, built among women in the primaries. And Democrats used strong words on Sunday to rebut the notion: Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said that women would not be “seduced” by the Republican ticket, and Guy Cecil, the former political director of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, said it was “insulting” for Republicans to compare Ms. Palin to Mrs. Clinton.
…
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they expected that in light of the Palin selection, she would focus her efforts especially on working women — middle- and working-class, married and single — in swing states where she ran strong, like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
You gotta sympathize with her. She spent years working her way up through the Senate, building a huge base of support, and spent millions upon millions of dollars in a campaign for president that garnered somewhere in the vicinity of 18 million votes and lose in a hotly contested primary, and then along comes Sarah dang Palin who in her biggest electoral victory got 114,000 votes and thinks she can just ride on your coattails and act like she was part of the movement? BS.
Like I’ve said before, McCain was hoping he was going to take Clinton’s supporters by nominating Palin, but all he’s going to do is harden Clinton’s resolve and get her working extra hard for Obama.
By Hanlon, on August 29th, 2008 at 05:42 PM
 Maybe I’m alone here, but I’m getting absolutely sick of the GOP suddenly being best friends with Hillary Clinton. I just saw an ad highlighting her brief praise of McCain, and in Palin’s acceptance speech she invoked how Clinton put “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling and that she’d be taking the torch.
This is just treating women like morons. The implication is that McCain and the GOP think that women will vote for any woman at all even if they’re diametrically opposed. Apparently women don’t pay attention to politics, so no matter what woman’s running, they’ll vote that way.
Not to mention we’re really only talking white women. Go ahead, check out those videos fo PUMA activists and the various Clinton loyalists. Any black women there? No? That’s probably because they’re all over at the Obama rally. It’s a move that’s both sexist and racist. Sorry, that’s just how she flies.
Speaking of Clinton, I really think McCain shot himself in the foot there. One of the reasons people said Obama needed to pick up Clinton was that he’d get all the benefits of the Clinton machine: fundraising, stumping, media appearances, the works. Bill Clinton is a powerhouse and without his wife on the ticket, so the wisdom goes, there’s no way Obama will get any of it.
Let me ask you this: if Clinton is really that singularly-focused, that self-interested, does anyone honestly believe she wants to see another woman become the first in the White House before her? The answer rhymes with HELL NO. If it’s true that she’s miffed about not being on the ticket, the last thing she and Bill want is some other woman to get in there first.
By the way, did everyone get amnesia and forget how absolutely brutally the right vilified Hillary for the past few years? They called her shrill, they called her bitchy, they said men cross their legs around her, they said all they hear is “TAKE OUT THE TRASH!” when she talks. Sexist, vile attacks over and over. But now it’s “let’s give a hand to Hillary for her historic campaign, and keep it going!”
One more thing. Wasn’t it Karl Rove that was ripping into Richmond, VA for being a little city? Palin was mayor of Wasilla, AK. A city with less than 6,000 people in it. The entire state of Alaska is about 680,000 people. Richmond has 1.2 million if count the metro area (which I believe is part of the mayor’s jurisdiction). Not that I’m holding my breath for anything resembling consistancy with these guys.
By Hanlon, on August 27th, 2008 at 08:44 PM
Just when you thought Hillary Clinton had topped out on class, she actually stops the roll call vote midstream and calls for Senator Obama to be declared the nominee by acclamation.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHFykdKig3Y
To quote Will (albeit with fewer expletives), this takes the wind out of the right wing’s sails a full day or two; they pretty much have no choice but to actually cover the convention now.
By Hanlon, on August 27th, 2008 at 02:22 PM
Two things happened this week that fundamentally changed the way I see Hillary Clinton. The first was a big honking article by Eric Boehlert that made me feel rather dumb. The take home message of it is:
Fact: Many in the press have portrayed Clinton’s planned convention address, as well as the fact that her name is being placed into nomination, as an unprecedented, heavy-handed power grab.
Fact: It’s not. In years past, Democratic candidates who won lots of primaries and accumulated hundreds of delegates (sorry, Howard Dean and Bill Bradley) have always been allowed to address the convention and very often place their name into nomination. It’s the norm. It’s expected. It’s a formality.
So my venom at her for wanting her name on the ballot was woefully ignorant and naive; caught up in the media frenzy. Furthermore, Boehlert brings up instances where those who were snubbed the nomination not only got their names on the ballot, but they angrily denounced the candidate and all but told their supporters not to vote for the nominee. Hillary’s been stumping for Obama, if anything she’s been extra gracious, it’s her supporters that have been the assholes.
Speaking of gracious, that’s point #2. In her speech at the DNCC, she said something that was just so perfect, I couldn’t believe it.
I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?
Bingo. Fantastically put, Hillary. The people who will vote McCain out of spite for Obama or stay home to show some kind of loyalty to Hillary, to the PUMAs who don’t give a shit about party unity, aren’t just hurting Barack Obama, they aren’t even just hurting the entire Democratic Party. They’re hurting every single American citizen who would be better off under an Obama presidency.
So when more Americans lose their health care, the PUMAs will be at fault. When the war in Iran launches, the PUMAs will be to blame. And when middle and low class Americans get taxed to death while the rich like McCain himself get boatloads of money back, everyone can thank those “die-hard Hillary supporters” for helping him.
Kudos to ya, Hillary Clinton. I hope the troglodytes refusing to listen to everyone else will at least listen to you.
By Hanlon, on July 1st, 2008 at 03:04 PM
 Honestly now, this is getting absurd.
When I first got sent this article, my first reaction to “McCain pulls ads from anti-Obama website” was the expected one of derision towards McCain himself. But then I actually read the thing (a rare occurrence, I know), and I noticed just what websites exactly were subject to the ad-pulling:
One Web site, called Stop-Obama.org, is a group blog written by disaffected Clinton supporters, some of whom are now supporting McCain. A banner ad featuring McCain standing side-by-side with Joe Lieberman was running on the site until Monday.
A recent post on the blog outlined the “simple parallels” between Obama and Hitler, and accused Obama’s audiences of having the same cult mentality that characterized followers of the German dictator.
McCain’s ads have also shown up on a pro-Clinton Web site named “Obama WTF” that accuses Obama of being “spineless,” having “communist influences,” “courting Jew haters” and being “in the pocket of America haters.”
The only real WTF here is that these Clinton nutters won’t let go of the grudge. Policy-wise they’re pretty similar, and let’s not forget that they’re stumping together now. If Clinton’s supporters really follow the woman, you’d think they’d follow her advice to support Obama. Yet here they are, pouring on the venom.
Unless…
Hey, wait a minute. What if we’re still dealing with Operation Chaos? The goal of the thing wasn’t to have Hillary win the primary. That’s why they didn’t support Clinton until she was way behind, if they thought she’d win it’d ruin the enterprise. Heck, if she was winning OC would probably be pumping Obama.
So the purpose of Operation Chaos wasn’t to have her win. What was it? Right what the name suggests. They just wanted to keep a rift in the Democratic party, and just because the primary’s over doesn’t mean they’re just going to pack up their bags and go home. Obama has just over half of Clinton’s supporters, and frankly that’s not going to be enough. So what better than to be one of those “independent” political groups and wreck the potential unity?
It’s not like the GOP’s never done this before. Let’s not forget the 2004 tactics against Kerry that involved spreading “pro-Kerry” messages intended to make Kerry seem so radical that he’d lose moderate voters. Amongst those tactics were fliers touting Kerry’s promise to ban the Bible and flamingly gay activists marching up voter lines in Florida talking about Kerry’s pledge to support gay adoption. Incredibly dishonest, painfully effective.
Now there’s another opening: keep the grudge from the primary season. Obviously no matter how much Clinton says otherwise, some of her supporters are going to still be bitter about how things went. Chances are, if left alone, they’d just bite the bullet and vote for Obama because, hey, it’s either that or McCain. Get a bunch of lunatic right-wingers to start fanning the flames some more, though, and now mob mentality kicks in and Operation Chaos can actually bring the genuine Clintonites along for the ride.
Mark my words, these are NOT actual Clinton supporters spearheading these efforts. In time it’ll all come out.
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