W. and the damage done

[swag]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/08/damage/?source=newsletter

Jan. 8, 2009 | After a couple of presidential terms, mismanagement in every area of policy -- foreign, domestic, even extraterrestrial -- starts to add up. When George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he inherited peace and prosperity. The military, the Constitution and New Orleans were intact and the country had a budget surplus of $128 billion. Now he's about to dash out the door, leaving a large, unpaid bill for his successors to pay.

To get a sense of what kind of balance is due, Salon spoke to experts in seven different fields. Wherever possible, we have tried to express the damage done in concrete terms -- sometimes in lives lost, but most often just in money spent and dollars owed. What follows is an incomplete inventory of eight years of mis- and malfeasance, but then a fuller accounting would run, um, somewhat longer than three pages.

Until not too long ago, President Bush's supporters could be heard to argue that the economy was the unheralded success story of his administration. In 2006, Larry Kudlow called it "The Greatest Story Never Told." While praising Bush, Ramesh Ponnuru decried the unfairness of it all. "It seems to happen every week: Some new piece of good economic news comes out, and Republicans sink a little deeper in the polls." To share their admiration, it helped if you ignored the way the wealth was being distributed. Or if you were a repo man.

But the whole debate became moot on Sept. 15, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Now the economy may be the most burdensome of all the Bush legacies that Barack Obama will have to shoulder.

The current financial and economic crisis has grown so massive, consuming everything in sight, that one might be able to forget that it started with bad mortgages. Well, one could try to forget, as long as one still has a home, or is not among the nearly one in four mortgage-holders whose homes are worth less than the debt on their homes.

. . . much more

[radfringe]

1. I seem to remember

that during one of the bush-Gore debates in 2000 - bush said he wouldn't leave things undone at the end of his term(s) should he be elected president

anyone else recall this?

[ixion]

2. gut wrenching, but a great read...

lots of information in there about the catastrophuck that is George W. Bush.

[SpiralHawk]

3. How bad is it? How much poorer have republicons made America? While enriching themselves?

Ptoooey on republicon piggies and how they have trashed America's economy, environment, and honor -- while engorging themselves at the public trough...

[SpiralHawk]

4. How republicons have TRASHED our sons & daughters in military service

The republicon chickenhawks have outdone themselves in screwing our sons and daughters in uniform, while enriching their fatcat crony mercenary war-profiteering corporations.

From the article:

Amount of money earned by a married U.S. Army sergeant with children per day in Iraq in 2007: $170

Amount of money earned by a Blackwater military contractor per day: $600