When I first saw this line on the new Bush campaign website, I thought it must be another parody.
bq. Ruth supports President Bush because… of his work for job creation and economic growth.
You know, if my job creation record looked like this, I think I would be trying to pretend I’d had other priorities the last 30 months or so.
{ 11 comments }
Realish 08.20.03 at 3:07 am
Note that Ruth didn’t cite any achievements in the area of job creation and economic growth.
Dell Adams 08.20.03 at 4:17 am
Can I vote for Ruth?
--kip 08.20.03 at 6:44 am
Folks, you’re missing the beauty of it all with this obsessive focus on facts and figures and is he lying or isn’t he. Scam past the front page and head straight over to GeorgeWBushStore.com. The Interstate W’04 merchandise is–breathtaking.
Nabakov 08.20.03 at 7:49 am
Didn’t he recently say he wouldn’t stop working until every American had a job – and left for a August vacation on his ranch
Davis X. Machina 08.20.03 at 6:34 pm
There’s a full-blown cult of personality that surrounds Our Dear Leader now, and people like Ruth aren’t a rarity.
Consider ProBush.com, for example.
You can sign the petition to add Junta Boy’s visage to Mt. Rushmore there, or peruse the Traitor’s list.
Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Sockpuppet.
Davis X. Machina 08.20.03 at 6:35 pm
I blew the link — cut, paste and worry…
Ratherworried 08.20.03 at 10:09 pm
Kind of fun to look at the chart and realize how many jobs were lost before the Bush Administration had taken office. Who do we attribute those losses to?
At the lowest point (in terms of job losses) no tax cut had been enacted and certainly the ‘effect’ of Bush Administration budget deficits were not reflected, to what do we attribute those job losses?
Partisan shots asside, when you look at the ‘job creation’ record of any President’s administration there is likely to be at least a 3 year lag before the economic policies of the administration have any effect at all on the ‘economy’ and even longer to ‘create jobs’.
For those that just *need* to criticize Bush’s handling of the economy the biggest impact has been the delay in going to war with Iraq. The uncertainty of the Iraq war prevented business investment in a way that no other government policy could.
I think the delay was all part of the Karl Rove master plan. The Iraq war is *over* and reconstruction is proceeding. I know soldiers are dying, etc… but even the conspiracy theorists have been embarassed by their doomy predictions. Even with the ‘post hostility’ deaths added to the war deaths not a single opponent of the war was within 10,000 soldiers of the current war death total.
The Karl Rove conspiracy is this…the timing of the entire war effort was designed to boost the President and his party during the mid-term elections. The gambit worked like a charm. The economy of course would suffer while the uncertainty of outcome existed. The Democrats would begin to view the economy as their *issue* and try to use it to regain Congress and control of the White House. Meanwhile, the economy, freed from the uncertainty of the Iraq war, and loaded with stimulous, would rebound in plenty of time to destroy the only issue the Democrats could find to run on.
And who is going to take a Democrat seriously who is proposing fiscal restraint and a huge tax payer funded health care program?
Brian Weatherson 08.20.03 at 10:35 pm
I don’t recall seeing many conservatives in 1983 saying that the economic improvement visible then was really because of Carter’s policies, and that nothing that happened under Reagan had yet had any effect. Maybe that’s plausible, but I’d trust conservatives more if they were consistent on this point.
By the way, the BLS site I linked to has data going back to the 1930s, and there’s some fairly neat stuff there if want a refresher on post-war economic history. One little factoid for partisans. Between 1946 and 2000 the average monthly growth in nonfarm payroll was 141,000. From 2001 to the present we’ve exceeded that number exactly once, in January 2003, when the number was 158,000. So far the administration is batting 1 for 30 in doing better than average (assuming we start assessing them in Feb 01.) Those are the kind of numbers that wouldn’t even get you a game on the old Washington Senators. For comparison, the numbers were better than average for 79 of the 96 months the Clinton team was there, for a positively Ruthian .822 batting average. Now sure some of these numbers are due to lag effects, and some are due to luck, but when enough numbers like these appear on the scoreboard, it starts to look like one team is simply better than the other.
Thomas 08.21.03 at 7:33 am
Brian, if you’re looking for liberals arguing for lag time, you ought to check out Brad Delong’s site. He made an argument for lag time for Clinton’s policies just this week, in response to a Saletan piece at Slate.
I’d trust liberals more on this point….
Really, this is just partisan bullshit, and not edifying in any way.
Nabakov 08.21.03 at 4:21 pm
hello Ratherworried.
I’ve got a skinful in me and I’m a mean drunk so here goes.
“For those that just need to criticize Bush’s handling of the economy the biggest impact has been the delay in going to war with Iraq.”
Properly handled, wars are great economic pump primers as Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman and LBJ discovered(all Democrats as you may have noticed).
This has also been beautifully detailed in “Report From Iron Mountain”, one of the greatest satirical (at least I hope it is satire)works since Swift’s “Modest Proposal”
(Anyone know if there’s any truth in the rumour Gailbraith was involved in “Iron Mountain”?)
“The uncertainty of the Iraq war prevented business investment in a way that no other government policy could.”
Why? It was basically a weapons testing prgram in Mesopotamia which carried about much economic risk as beating up Panama.(We know it wasn’t about oil, was it?)
And besides, Bush 1 actually took longer (google it, babe) to mobilise his forces to save one dictatorship from another. Ain’t many saying that’s what caused the baby recession then.
“I think the delay was all part of the Karl Rove master plan.”
Which implies timing a war, and tens of thousands of deaths, is all central to Karl’s job, -“Bush ’04”.
“The Iraq war is over… ”
Anyone can start a war, not everyone can finish it. How do you define war anyway? More US soldiers have died after that “Mission Accoplished” banner was hoisted than before it.
“…and reconstruction is proceeding.”
After four months of being in complete charge of the world’s second largest documented oil fields, the US is now importing petrol into Iraq.
Oil infrastructure sabotage? D’oh! They didn’t see that coming?
This is what worries me most about the current US junta. Not the greed, arrogance and embedded corruption (we’re used that by now in far too many admistrations – including one I’m a player in) – but their sherr bloody imcompetence.
These fuck knuckles couldn’t organise a pissup in a brewery.
PS: “Spirited Away” is great.
Nabakov 08.21.03 at 4:29 pm
above posting.
token typo apology for
I’m under the alcoflunce of incohol.
More elbow in yer power too, mate.
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