People who think FOX is “Fair and balanced” should not watch
it because they will buy the distortions, inaccuracies and lies; but for those
who know that this is entertainment, not news, it can be fun.
Lou Dobbs has his own show on FOX
which I haven’t watched but he is frequently brought in to other shows for his
political insight. A persistent theme on FOX is ridiculing Obama supporters for
blaming Bush for all the problems of the past four years, especially the
economy. It gave me a good laugh when he said last Friday that the economy is
coming back because of the Bush tax cuts which President Obama wants to do away
with. My initial bubble of mirth came from the hypocrisy that Bush should not
be blamed for anything bad but he should be credited with anything good. Here
is Lou blaming Obama for wanting to raise taxes on the wealthiest because their
low taxes are the reason the economy is rebounding.
That’s also
funny because the tax cuts came in 2001 yet they somehow did nothing to avert
the recession that began in December 2007 and by the time Obama took office
unemployment was up to 7.8%. It had gone up steadily from 5% to 7.8% in Bush’s
last year in office. Now, in November 2012 Lou, credits The Bush tax cuts with
turning the recession around. I mean, come on, that’s funny.
I recognize
that saying the economy is “rebounding” is an overstatement since unemployment
is really just back to where it was when Obama took office but in the ensuing 4 years it got as high as
the scary 10% figure.
Since I do
try to be fair I’ll tell you that unemployment in 2006 and 2007 was below 5%;
so we could point to the tax cuts made 5 years before as being responsible for
those two years. But then, again, unemployment when Bush was elected was
3.9% (4.2% when he took office but I
couldn’t resist mentioning that it was below 4% for the 4 months prior to his taking
office and went above 5% for the four years after the tax cuts.
I can hear
Lou now, “Don’t confuse me with facts; my mind’s already made up.” That should
be the FOX theme rather than fair and balanced.
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1 comment:
GW Bush's job creation average, in non-recession months, was 68,000. When Obama had a month a while back, that was about 75,000 (which is very low for Obama non-recession months), the Republicans were screaming bloody murder (but, then, they do that on everything). It was the sign of a new recession! It was the end of the world at the hands of commie/socialist/statist/collectivist usurper.
GW inherited a recession that resulted from the bursting of Clinton's little tech bubble, and then went about ignoring the over-inflation of a housing bubble that, when it burst, created a recession larger than the last four recessions combined, which was further fueled by state and local government layoffs, while the previous recoveries had seen increases in government employees.
The Little Bush Depression was massive. 2008Q4 GDP was negative 9 (way more than they thought at the time). Job losses in Jan 2009 were 800,000. The bursting of the housing bubble, combined with the near collapse of financial markets and the entire economy, was a very real possibility. No one has done as much damage to the US economy since Hoover. And these guys, like Dobbs, who were wrong about everything from tax cuts to Iraqi WMD, still have high paying jobs talking to people who actually listen to them?
The long arc of the moral universe has bent a little less toward justice in that regard.
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