If G eorge W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If G eorge W. Bush had given Tony Blair a set of inexpensive and useless (to Tony Blair's UK video formatting) DVDs, when Tony Blair had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If G eorge W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have approved?

If G eorge W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

If G eorge W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If G eorge W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?

If G eorge W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

If G eorge W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If G eorge W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 10 weeks -- so you'll have three years and nine-and-a-half months to come up with an answer.

Jack, glad to see this president has the same effect on the right, that last one had on the left. Sorry you lost, try harder next time, only 3 years away.

You can almost see the tears.

#2 and #3 - You clowns were the ones screaming about the national deficit when Bush was in office.

Now it has tripled... in 100 days... and you're nonchalant?

How does that f*cking kool-aid taste, anyway?

Macs- rocket scientist- your boy started this, and did nothing till it was too late, jacked up the left(It had to be fixed right now), gave the banks the keys to our safe, and you blame on Obama, who has been in office for 100 days. Its your story, make it up as you go I guess.

No, I blame Jimmy Carter for coming back into office masquerading as a black man.

Dry, how lame can you be...your "boy" has taken the notion of deficit spending to unprecedented heights, orders of magnitude above anything Bush ever envisioned. I just love how you libs will find any excuse to excuse the irresponsible indebtedness this president is putting us and our grandchildren in. Excusing bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior is never a valid argument.

Remember Jack, liberalism is a mental illness!!!

Even when Obama fails miserably it will be G.W.B's fault because they will say:

Look what we inherited. It was so bad that even we could not fix what George Bush did!!!

#5 - Yo drywalldouche... brain surgeon... Bush's bailout was ridiculously stupid. We can agree on that.

Obama made it 3 times worse by passing his own. What we should have done was left it alone. Let the companies that were going to fail, fail. THAT would have been the responsible thing to do. Our economy would have SELF corrected much faster.

Now we're f***ed. Triple f***ed thanks to your boy.

I'm not an economics major, but even I know spending your way out of debt doesn't f***ing work.

Bush was a bad president, as he almost doubled the national debt. Obama is borrowing money even faster. I am a fiscal conservative, and I am outraged. For a long time, I have been for lower taxes, to stimulate the economy, and reduced spending, to reduce the debt. Unfortunately, the republicans, which controlled both the legislative and the executive branch from 2000 - 2006, couldn't stay out of the tough. Spending money like drunken sailors, while cutting taxes, to stimulate the economy. While tax revenue actually increased, the national debt increased at a much higher rate. I have not researched it, but I bet the interest that we pay on the national debt, is probably within the top three expenditures of our country. Defense, and healthcare being the other two.

We gotta do something about the debt.

But the republicans, have proven to NOT be the answer. The democrats are not the answer either.

Basically, until a viable third party takes a majority, we are fucked.

That is why I vote party line Libertarian.

Dave (A.K.A. Homebrew)

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

Um, jack . . . Ever Heard of Bushisms? - Where wings take dream ! ! !

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?

Dammit jack, How Many Charges of Cronyism were there ??? ...

How about Michael Brown and Harriet Myers just to name Two ... The list is about 40 names long, though . . .

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

Yo, jack . . . Did you ever see the photo of Bush holding hands with the Saudi Royal ... ?

And this was just a few years after 9/11 when NINETEEN of the TWENTY ONE Hijackers Came From Saudi Arabia ! ! !

You, sir, are NOT insane.

You refuse to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. I applaud you.

I agree with you.

12 for 10.

Dave isn't susceptible to Classical Conditioning . . . (aka Pavlovian)

My party is the good party. Your party is the bad party.

i would have applauded bush's every decision.

There is no longer a need to worry about the national debt or deficit spending. As long as other governments are less stable than ours, people will continue to loan our nation money at low interest rates. We borrow more money to make the interest payments.

If at some point the world rises up and reaches the conclusion that the US government has no clue what its doing, has no means to ever pay back its debt, and the US dollar should not be considered as a safe haven currency, we will be forced to take action. The action we will take is to destabiliZe some portion of the planet until such time that the USA again appears to be the most stabile. We don't need to have our act together and offer leadership by example. We just have to be less screwed up than everyone else and if some collective body of nations starts looking too good, we will take them down. Presidents Bush and Obama have figured this out. I hope you didn't think that the action we would take is to start living below our means as a nation and repaying national debt through massive tax increases!

We will never repay our national debt. If you actually believe we will, stop having children and let somebody else's kids pay for all the benefits and fun stuff you are receiving today.

Once the world reaches the conclusion that we will never repay our national debt, there will be an old-fashioned "run on the bank" as US debt rapidly becomes worthless. People who loan money to us (including pensions and 401Ks) are gambling that they are not the last ones in on a ponZi scheme.

When a "run on the bank" starts, the nations that caused it will be bombed, wars will break out, and all US debt will be eliminated via a national bankruptcy. Nobody who has the power to start the "run on the bank" wants to start it because being bombed sucks. (China and oil sheikdoms have the power now)

So, hockeydad et. al., sounds like gold is a good investment even at its current high prices. What do you think? Never mind, I don't even have $ for good cigars. On a quest to find cheaper...anyway I got help for that on another thread.

So,

does anyone remember Rosa Luxemburg and her 2 co-leaders? Coming into leadership when Germany was paying war reparations (WWI) that it could not afford and otherwise in a mess, Rosa & the other 2 (it's 4:52 a.m. can't remember and won't look it up) thought it more important to try to fix the country than have the blame for the mess correctly fixed on the true perpetrators. The new leaders immediately took the blame for the mess that they did not create, they said, "Yes, it is all our fault," (not in English, but essentially). They thought that that would help the country concentrate on solutions. So,

Soonafter, those 3 leaders were hanged. Then the NAZIs began rising...

Obama is wrong, a tiny bit, sometimes, often?...however, attacking him as if he does not care or try--why?

Hockeydad, don't know how much is joking and how much not, but interesting. Hope to see you sometime.

I better go back to bed. All the best, to all of you

Just for fun !

In answer to the OP

I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt during the first part of his term, and didn't look for and highlight any little thing I could pick at and find wrong.

I was solidly behind Bush after 911, through Afghanastan and beleived his was honorable in the run up to War with Iraq...... until I realized that day Colin Powell was at the UN that we had nothing. My faith that the administration knew more than us and the world took a hit that day.

From that point on, my main point of contention was with Bush on that issue and the tertiary issues that accompanied it.

At that point I admittedly did become hypercritical of other issues as well and at times probably went to far.

But in answer to the OP...... no I did not and will not nitpick so hard to find something wrong just because my guy lost. I want our President to do well regardless of party and am rooting for him.

In the event there is a flashpoint issue of merit or an accumulation of non-trivial issues such as there was with Bush, I will be as critical as anyone. The deficite could very well become that issue.

I couldn't give a **** about ipods.