It seems that so many liberals have a serious memory disorder. Lately we have been hearing criticism of conservative angst and the frustration on display at town halls all across America. Liberals are simply shocked at such rude, horrific, hateful behavior. Nancy Pelosi dropped a Nazi reference while in Arkansas, and I would be dollars to doughnuts that anything resembling a swastika was planted by an SEIU or Acorn racist piece of crap thug. After all, it’s straight out of the Alinsky handbook. “No way,” our moderate and liberal friends, say. That’s just tinfoil hat talk. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Saul Alinsky was asked by college students at Tulane how to protest George HW Bush in 1972. He told them that instead of shouting Bush down, they should:
“go to hear the speech dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards reading, ‘The KKK supports Bush.’ And that is what they did, with very successful, attention-getting results.”
I am quite confident that this tactic is in play today.
So, as a reminder to the supposed high-road liberals out there, dissent is still patriotic, even when the opinions shouted are opposite of your own views.Here are some examples of the class liberals showed during the last eight years.
I’m really getting tired of hypocritical liberals telling me that my expression of free speech is offensive. I find political correctness offensive. I find Nancy Pelosi’s lies offensive. I find Joe Biden’s gaffes offensive. I find Barack Obama’s flip flopping and misleading offensive. I am waiting for the return of the days when free speech was supported by all Americans, especially liberals.
“Liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.” Lenny Bruce
I’m not from Texas, but I got here as quick as I could. The Wicked Bitch of the West, a.k.a. Speaker Pelosi, made an appearance in Houston. This video shows you how Texans feel about her lies and, ahem, leadership. I love Texas!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTUtLnOSqQk]
This from the party that wanted to investigate, indict and witch hunt as many Republicans as they could. So much for the most ethical Congress ever, huh Madame Speaker? Do you remember saying these words Nancy? Care for a do-over now?
“The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history”
Honest. Open. Ethical. Hope. Change.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PorKdlD46Q]
Nancy Pelosi is a horrible liar. I’d love to play poker with her just once. She berated the Bush administration for the use of torture, but now that we have learned that she knew about it years ago she’s singing a different song.
Allahpundit at HotAir.com sums it up nicely:
To refresh your memory of the timeline, there’s no dispute that she knew waterboarding was going on by February 2003, when one of her staffers went to a briefing on it and relayed the details to her. The question is simply whether she found out even earlier than that, in September 2002, after the CIA had started waterboarding Abu Zubaydah. Why does the timing matter? Um, it doesn’t: Even if it’s true that the CIA told her in 2002 that they were only thinking of using the technique, the very thought of it should have ignited her righteous progressive outrage. Instead, her defense here — I kid you not — is that by the time she learned they were waterboarding people in 2003, Jane Harman had become the ranking member on the intelligence committee and so, you know, it wasn’t Nan’s job anymore to speak up. Besides, she was too focused at the time on the big Democratic electoral turnaround … which wouldn’t happen for another three years. Make sure you watch at least to the part where she insists she doesn’t think she should have done more to stop the program. There’s that old activist liberal spirit! As Andy Levy says, “Nancy Pelosi’s lies are so transparent birds are slamming into them.”
In February on Rachel Maddow Pelosi offered her first stuttering denial:
- “They did not brief us with these enhanced interrogations were taking place.”
- “I can say flat out they never told us they were being used.”
On April 23, 2009 she offered a second stuttering denial:
- “we were not told that water boarding ot any of these other enhanced interrogations were used.”
Then, after being outed by reality, on April 27, 2009 she changed her tune through the proxy of an aide, and we were told that Pelosi didn’t protest directly out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels.
There’s plenty more to read here and here. And here. Or here.
For the sake of levity, let’s laugh it up. Here’s John Stewart giving Pelosi the once over.
One of the biggest myths about our current economic situation is that it was caused by the failed policies of George W. Bush. President Obama described it as “a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years…” I guess he drinks his own kool-ade. The Wicked Speaker from the West blames “the Bush administration’s eight long years of failed deregulation policies.” Captain Peanut, a.k.a. President Carter, blames the “atrocious economic policies of the Bush administration,” particularly “deregulation and . . . a withdrawal of supervision of Wall Street.”
But what is the truth?
We first need to define how to measure deregulation. I suggest three categories:
- Paperwork: Pages of legislation
- Money: Budget spending
- People: Staffing levels
Paperwork
Under the Bush Administration the Federal Register – the government’s annual compendium of proposed and finalized regulations – was more than 74,000 pages every year but one. During the Clinton years, by contrast, the Federal Register reached that length just once. Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001.
In addition, President Bush signed hundreds of laws commanding federal agencies to produce new regulations. One is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which established new or enhanced standards for all publicly held companies and accounting firms in the United States. Another is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, which imposed new restrictions on campaign spending and prohibited unregulated contributions (“soft money”) to national political parties.
Money
Adjusting for inflation, the regulatory budget grew from $25 billion in fiscal year 2000 to an estimated $43 billion in FY 2009 – a 70 percent increase. “In constant dollars,” writes James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal, “the Bush regulatory budget increases vastly exceed those of predecessors Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, and, yes, Lyndon Johnson.” Freeman also write “Looking at regulatory spending in percentage terms, Mr. Bush’s staggering 2003 increase of more than 24% was the largest in the last 50 years.”
Ten Largest Annual Percentage Increases
in Total Regulatory Budget Spending (last 50 years)
| GW Bush 2003 Nixon 1973 Nixon 1971 GW Bush 2002 Nixon 1972 Kennedy 1963 Ford 1976 Nixon 1970 Johnson 1968 Nixon 1975 |
24.3% 20.0 19.6 16.4 14.6 13.6 10.9 10.6 09.5 09.4 |
The Bush team spent more taxpayer money on issuing and enforcing regulations than any previous administration in U.S. history. Between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2009, outlays on regulatory activities, adjusted for inflation, increased from $26.4 billion to an estimated $42.7 billion, or 62 percent. By contrast, President Clinton increased real spending on regulatory activities by 31 percent, from $20.1 billion in 1993 to $26.4 billion in 2001.
With specific regard for the category of finance and banking, expenditures were cut by 3 percent during the Clinton years and increased 29 percent from 2001 to 2009, making it very hard to argue that Bush deregulated the financial sector.
People
Let’s look at staffing levels. Regulatory agencies employed 175,000 people in 2000. They employ nearly 264,000 today. In eight years, Bush increased the federal government’s regulatory staff by 91,196 employees. In his eight years Clinton cut it by 969.
So there you have it. The Bush Adminstration spent more, wrote more, and employed more. Tell me Mr. President and Madam Speaker, how with a clear conscience can George W. Bush be called a failed de-regulator?
