Thank you Bush

[DaShi]

Yes. I'm all for evil/smart

Halfway there, my friend.

[Naked Gents Rut]

I think Bush's Iraq stick it out was more around not wanting to admit a false move than about moral stance.

Nah. He would've cut and run long ago if he didn't love Jesus and hate booze.

[Dr Strangelove]

Outgoing US President George Bush telephoned President Shimon Peres bidding him farewell on the occasion of the end of Bush's term as president Tuesday.


Peres said to Bush, "If the world had acted against Hitler the way you acted against Saddam Hussein, the lives of millions would have been saved." The president added, "You made a historic contribution to the entire world and to the Jewish people in particular. We will treasure this forever and will never forget it."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3658858,00.html

But Bush wasn't going after Saddam Hussein, he was going after al-Qaeda, and Hussein wasn't tied in with al-Qaeda. It's more like: "If the world had acted against Hirohito the way you acted against bin Laden, Taiwan would be part of the PRC now."

[Elok]

The official video of the inauguration:

[Lonestar]

THANK YOU FOR PISSING 11.5 TRILLION DOLLARS DOWN THE DRAIN BUSH

Cost of the Bush era: $11.5 trillion

The outgoing administration has presided over 8 years of disasters and crises with some of the biggest price tags the nation has ever seen

By John Dyer, MSN Money

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/In ... llion.aspx

George W. Bush's presidency cost the country about $11.5 trillion, if we estimate liberally. Of course, it's debatable how much blame the president should bear.

Over the past eight years, we've suffered calamities that were bound to damage the nation deeply: two recessions, the most lethal terrorist attacks ever on U.S. soil, the invasion of Iraq on dubious grounds, the near destruction of one of our most storied cities and, finally, the Wall Street meltdown.

Because the median U.S. household income is about $50,000, readers may have trouble grasping the concept of spending trillions.

For context, let's compare two cases of extraordinary spending under Bush.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington pledged $22 billion to help rebuild in lower Manhattan. At the time, that sum sounded enormous. It was more than one-fourth of the $80 billion budget that New York state had adopted a month before. Though some called for even more aid, the country at large was satisfied that this response was adequate to cope with calamity on a colossal scale.

Oh, how far we've come.

In early October of 2008, Congress appropriated $700 billion to rescue Wall Street's financial institutions. Once that was done, the sky was the limit, and the numbers became dizzying.

And the spending won't stop after Bush leaves office Jan. 20.

In hopes of "breaking the momentum" of the current recession, President-elect Barack Obama is reportedly drafting a stimulus package that would cost the government as much $850 billion. If past is precedent, it's unlikely Obama will stop there.

The new administration is already expected to inherit a $1.2 trillion deficit from Bush. The stimulus package would add to that record-breaking number.

Picture an avalanche of cash disappearing into the Potomac.

Where has all the money gone? Here are five areas where Bush has approved massive outlays of taxpayer money.

Wall Street bailouts: $6 trillion

When the real-estate bubble burst, Wall Street collapsed, too. Starting with Bear Stearns in March, investment banks fell like dominoes, done in by overexposure to mortgage-backed securities. We're still sifting through the damage. But we know U.S. taxpayers are among the biggest losers.

In hopes of stanching the bleeding, the federal government has spent or put at risk approximately $6 trillion. True, a big part of that number reflects the government's purchase of securities that may actually yield a profit one day. Critics of this enormous commitment will point out that it has yet to produce any solid evidence of a turnaround in the economy's slide, while the Bush administration's apologists argue that, without such a commitment, the news would have been much worse.

The best-known aspect of this epic spending spree is the U.S. Treasury's $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, whose remit has included purchasing so-called toxic securities, giving banks cash and helping Detroit automakers avoid bankruptcy.

But TARP, as the program is known, is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Treasury also gave $300 billion in guarantees for struggling Citigroup, poured $200 billion into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when officials seized the mortgage giants to prevent their bankruptcy, and granted an additional $50 billion in temporary guarantees to keep investors from pulling out of money market funds. Again, a guarantee doesn't necessarily mean the Treasury will actually spend the money. But that money is at risk, and that's taxpayer money.

The Federal Reserve has also been busy. Central bankers have said they could purchase as much as $1.3 trillion of commercial paper from nonfinancial companies to make sure businesses have the working capital they need in an environment where banks are hesitant to lend. The Fed has committed an additional $1 trillion to a variety of credit facilities designed to encourage banks to loosen up, from outright loans to banks, to purchases of securities backed by consumer credit, to $600 billion to buy securities backed by prime mortgages -- a move that knocked standard home loan rates down to 5%.

And there's more.

Among other federal rescue measures we have the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s decision to guarantee as much as $1.4 trillion in interbank loans, $300 billion for the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgages in danger of foreclosure and a $150 billion aid package for insurance giant American International Group.

A lot of the guarantees that have been made will never come into play; just making a guarantee usually does the trick, if it's the Federal Reserve speaking. Here is some more good news: Some of the government's crisis-related investments may actually prove profitable. Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, believes the government could see a profit of $500 billion from stock dividends and the appreciation of stocks. Just remember, that's peanuts in this game.

There are other variables that complicate the picture on a similar scale. The federal government is on the hook for $5 trillion of debt that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwrote. The two companies themselves hold only a third of that debt, Kogan said, so it's unclear what the taxpayer's ultimate liability will be there.

Also unclear is how the Wall Street bailout money is being spent. The Treasury has been reluctant to monitor how banks are using TARP funds, and the Fed has refused to name the recipients of its loans, arguing that naming names would undermine the health of the companies in question.

"It's a lot of money going out the door, with basically no public knowledge of it whatsoever," said Dean Baker, a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

About $600 billion of the Fed's $1.3 trillion plan to buy commercial paper has been spent, Baker said. But the Fed won't say who has received that cash.

"People are making and losing fortunes depending on whether the Fed will buy their commercial paper," Baker said. "We should know what they're doing."

Iraq and Afghanistan: $3 trillion

The searches for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have morphed into occupations. So far, the U.S. has spent around $860 billion on both, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University say the agency is underestimating the tab. In their book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War" they claim Iraq will be far costlier.

Modern technology and medicine have kept U.S. deaths in these conflicts low, compared with previous wars, but tens of thousands of wounded soldiers will require taxpayer-supplied health care for years, said Bilmes, who served as an assistant secretary of commerce in the Clinton administration. Factoring in those benefits, replacement of worn-out hardware and other hidden bills, Bilmes and Stiglitz believe the real price for Iraq is $3 trillion.

That money hasn't been reinvested in the U.S. economy as mush as possibly expected, partly because of outsourcing by U.S. companies, Bilmes said. One example is construction company KBR, which used shell companies in the Cayman Islands to avoid payroll taxes.

"A dollar that is spent on a road is a dollar which has a multiplier," Bilmes said. "You have better roads. Whereas a dollar spent on a Malaysian contractor to do laundry doesn't help the U.S."

Tax cuts and deficit spending: $2 trillion

In 2001 and 2003, Bush signed legislation that cut taxes, much to the benefit of the affluent. The first cut was designed to help the economy after the Internet bubble collapsed. The second was to boost growth after the 2001 recession ended.

Kogan estimated the tax cuts have cost the Treasury $1.7 trillion in revenue to date. Of course, that may not be one bit disturbing to the taxpayers who've watched their tax bills go down. The only problem is, the cuts have been critical in opening up the gargantuan budget gap that Obama will face.

Because Bush did not reduce spending, Washington has paid about $265 billion in interest on loans to cover the lost revenue. So the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts really cost around $2 trillion.

Meanwhile, Bush increased deficit spending, incurring more debt service. Bush's expansion of Medicare drug benefits for the elderly, for example, cost around $130 billion, of which $10 billion was debt service between 2006 and 2008, said Kogan, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

"If some of this spending had been paid for by tax increases, then there wouldn't have been interest costs," he said. "But none of it was. We had tax cuts and spending increases."

In an e-mail, Treasury Department spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin said Bush's tax cuts had helped the economy by allowing people to keep more of their wages and other earnings, increasing incentives to work, save and invest.

McLaughlin also cited an Office of Management and Budget/Haver Analytics study that compared federal spending as a share of gross domestic product under Bush and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Under Bush, spending grew from 18.4% of GDP in fiscal 2000 to 20.7% in fiscal 2008, the study said. FDR increased spending from 6.3% in fiscal 1932 to 43.6% in fiscal 1944.

Of course, Roosevelt was dealing with a full-blown depression and war against Germany and Japan.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: $270 billion

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, New Orleans' levees gave way, and the city was inundated. Stories of survivors trapped in the Superdome and incompetence at the Federal Emergency Management Agency transformed the natural disaster into a national disgrace.

Katrina, along with Hurricane Rita soon after, cost about $270 billion, by some estimates. In Louisiana alone, officials said the hurricane destroyed $100 billion in property, shrank the state's economy by $80 billion and required $20 billion in local emergency relief.

Those figures don't include damages in other states, including communities that absorbed refugees fleeing the city. They also don't count the continuing costs of rebuilding the Big Easy.

FEMA has given $50 billion to Gulf Coast states, a spokesman said. The Army Corps of Engineers is spending $14 billion to upgrade levees, according to the agency's Web site.

Meantime, the Louisiana Recovery Authority is spending $10 billion in recovery efforts that include homeowners retrofitting their houses, for example.

"People are adding storm shutters and roof tie-downs so that they can make their homes more resilient," said Christina Stephens, an agency spokeswoman. "We're encouraging them to mitigate future loss."

9/11: $260 billion

New York City lost about $95 billion because of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a 2002 report by City Comptroller William Thompson Jr.

That price tag includes costs associated only with New York: $22 billion to replace the World Trade Center, $65 billion in lost economic activity in the three years after the attacks and $9 billion in the human potential that disappeared when the hijackers killed 2,819 people in Manhattan -- a calculation that illustrates why economics is called the dismal science. It does not include Washington's $22 billion in aid.

Outside New York, the tragedy cost plenty. Kogan estimated that Bush spent about $140 billion on related nonmilitary measures, such as the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

The approximate total of $260 billion does not include the damage wrought and lives lost on 9/11 at the Pentagon or in Pennsylvania, or money spent on preparedness by state and local governments and private industry. It also doesn't include the continuing losses associated with the vacant World Trade Center site, which housed as much office space as downtown Atlanta.

In other words, we're still paying for 9/11.

Produced by Elizabeth Daza/Graphics by Sean Enzwiller

Published Jan. 14, 2009

[Ben Kenobi]

Ewoks! That's racist don't you know that Elok.

I expect an apology to the Ewoks for comparing them to BO.

[Imran Siddiqui]

But Bush wasn't going after Saddam Hussein, he was going after al-Qaeda, and Hussein wasn't tied in with al-Qaeda. It's more like: "If the world had acted against Hirohito the way you acted against bin Laden, Taiwan would be part of the PRC now."

I thought we all knew that he actually was going after Saddam and Al-Qaeda was merely a way to allow him to go after him.

[Imran Siddiqui]

One place I will thank Bush is the transition:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/opinion/20ornstein.html

Mr. Bush’s Gentlemanly Goodbye

THE past few weeks have been a time to reflect on the legacy of the Bush administration. It has not been a kind time for George W. Bush. Most analyses have been harsh, raking him over the coals for everything from Hurricane Katrina to Abu Ghraib to the financial meltdown to his advocacy of nearly unfettered executive power. I would join in many of those criticisms. But there is one area where President Bush’s legacy will be strong and admirable — the way he is leaving office.

Presidential transitions are always difficult. The United States has an extraordinarily long three-month interregnum during which the person departing the presidency retains full power while the person elected to assume the office waits to take over. I have likened it to a man who moves in with his fiancée — while her soon-to-be former husband still lives in the house. This awkwardness combines with the natural tension between the old and new over policy and personnel that exists even when the outgoing and incoming presidents are in the same party (ask members of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan’s staffs about the 1988 transition).

For an outgoing president, there is always some resentment that the new guy is expected to act as president starting the day after the election; everyone anticipates his policies and ignores the actions of the lame duck. The president is often skittish about providing the newcomer with top-secret information, in part because the new team is not formally in place. For the president-elect, the outgoing president’s 11th-hour actions, including appointments of his loyalists to career positions, stir resentment.

Incoming members of a president-elect’s team often encounter sullenness from their outgoing counterparts, or a false eagerness by some who don’t want to leave their posts at all.

Beginning well before the election, President Bush and his chief of staff, Josh Bolten, decided to make this transition different by removing many of the usual obstacles and fostering cooperation and harmony. President Bush created a formal transition council, headed by Mr. Bolten and including all the people in charge of national security and the economy in his administration, and this group has met regularly to address every action, large and small, that needs to be taken to turn over power.

The signals went beyond simple cooperation. Mr. Bolten and Clay Johnson, from the Office of Management and Budget, who had worked on the transition when President Bush came to the White House, expedited the security checks and other administrative processes for Barack Obama’s nominees. National security briefings were held with the president-elect in Chicago, and a high level of important information was shared with his top aides even before they were assigned to specific posts. It is also clear that Mr. Bush has agreed to make a few difficult or unpopular decisions on his way out so as not to burden Mr. Obama with them — for example, his request last week that Congress release the second half of the $700 financial billion bailout.

To be sure, President Bush has signed some last-minute executive orders, especially in the environmental area, that will create headaches for Mr. Obama. But as a top Obama transition official told me, these were limited in number and scope and all done in the open.

A good piece of the credit for the smooth transition is also due to the Obama transition team. But it was important for President Bush to be accommodating, given the nature of this transition, occurring as it does during a time of war and economic crisis. The nation can little afford a rocky transfer of power. America also faces threats from terrorists and other adversaries, and the first few months of a new administration can be a vulnerable time for the nation — when the full national security and economic teams are not yet in place and no crisis decision-making process has been established.

The Bush administration may be leaving the country with big policy problems. But George W. Bush deserves a big gold star for the way he is leaving his office.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

[Alinestra Covelia]

The Economist had a pretty good retrospective about him. They mostly said his was a faith-based presidency, and that came with positives and negatives both.

Some positives that I personally think he gets too little credit for:

1. Reform of immigration laws, even when his own party was calling for more discriminatory measures. Blocked by Congress.
2. Stricter oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Likewise blocked by Congress.
3. Surprisingly liberal policies on international trade. Again in defiance of the Republicans (and several Democrats), Bush refused to punish China for low currency, and was a strong proponent of the Doha global free trade agreement.

The number of points of his presidency I disagree with are much more lengthy, and I'm personally glad to see him leave. But I think it's important to see what he did right as well.

Edit: link to the Economist article.

[BeBMan]

Now that Bush has nothing to do we could get him to post at Poly

[Imran Siddiqui]

Him and Ben could be best buds forevar!

[Alinestra Covelia]

He may already be at Poly. Didn't somebody win an OT election recently?

[Elok]

Ewoks! That's racist don't you know that Elok.

I expect an apology to the Ewoks for comparing them to BO.

...I think you misunderstand. I was afraid that would happen, but I didn't have time to dig up the less ambiguous special edition version where people all across the Empire are cheering the Emperor's death, knocking over Palpatine statues, etc. I meant that the psychotically buoyant carnival atmosphere around DC made me wonder if perhaps Dick Cheney had personally shot W in the face and knocked him into a conveniently placed bottomless pit before perishing himself.

[Ben Kenobi]

Wouldn't that be the other way around? The student defeating his master?

[chequita guevara]

You know, I think we should be grateful we got Bush. Bush was a mediocrity, hardly up to the task of the office he was placed in. A man of more intelligence, more charisma, and more drive, could have made the United States into what many liberals feared it was becoming, a fascist state. The followers of Bush were ready for it. It is our great fortune they found expression of their desire for a great leader in a complete schmuck. We were lucky. It could have been ever so much worse.