Posted on 09/18/2008 8:21:51 PM PDT by ceoinva
If you're wondering why a formerly honorable man like John McCain would build his presidential campaign around issues that are simultaneously beside-the-point, trivial, and dishonest (sex education for kindergartners, lipstick on pigs), the numbers presented here may help to solve that mystery. Since the conventions ended, McCain has mired the presidential race in dishonest trivia because he doesn't want it to focus on what voters say is the most important issue this year: the economy.
There is no secret about any of this. The figures ... are all from the annual Economic Report of the President, and the analysis is primitive. Nevertheless, what these numbers show almost beyond doubt is that Democrats are better at virtually every economic task that is important to Republicans.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
(or my personal favorite)
Figures never lie, but liars figure...
Kinsley is a pansy who had too many wedgies as a kid.
Democrats lie. So do Democrat shills like Kinsley.
I haven’t been able to take Kinsley serious for many, many moons. LOL!
Democrats are better for the economy? After the sham energy bill they passed? HA! I don’t think so!
I think if you honestly look at the numbers, you’d see that Republican congresses are better for the economy than Democrat congresses.
He hasn’t been significant since....ever. He’s such a girl!
I can sum up the case against Kinsey’s nonsense with one word:
Michigan.
8.9% unemployment, brought to you by the DNC.
I can honestly say I miss Michael Kinsley and Pat Buchanan on cross fire. I have not watched it in years now.
Not to mention Fannie and Freddie.
Economic gurus, I tell ya’.
McCain NEVER ran an ad about “lipstick on a pig”, and McCain NEVER said that Obama called Palin a pig.
Considering the ‘lies,damn lies, and statistics’ aspect of this, there are these flaws:
1. he ignored factor of who was in charge of Congress
2. The period covers a Republican, Nixon, who imposed price controls, and a Democrat, JFK, who cut taxes... cutting taxes helped the 1960s be mroe successful and price controls were counterproductive. notably the
The modern period - since 1974 - the Democrat party is far to the left, although the only 2 term Democrat in this period had a fairly fiscally responsible budget, largely due to the influence of the Republican Congress (Newt Gingrich Congress and Clinton).
Thus, a more honest appraisal would start the clock at 1976 or 1974 and forward. It would also look at who was in charge of Congress.
The main one-party times were Dem 1976-1980 and 1992-1994 and GOP2002-2006. I calculated just the GOP growth averages from the periods, 1968-2006.
growth average - president/Congressional party
2.98% Nixon/Dem
2.60% Nixon-Ford/Dem
3.28% Carter/Dem
4.13% Reagan Era/Mixed-Dem
2.14% Bush-Mitchell/Dem
3.35% Clinton-Dem
3.83% Clinton-Gingrich/GOP
1.17% Bush-Daschle/Mixed
3.02% Bush/GOP Congress
3.57% Pres D avg
3.03% Cong D avg
3.51% Cong R avg
2.80% Pres R avg
Comments:
Kinsley further made the Dem numbers look good by including the JFK/LBJ years of growth.
The data does indeed show that the economy grew under Democrat presidents Carter and Clinton reasonably well, but in Carter’s case we are not tracking the misery index which was horrible or inflation which got out of control under his watch. But the best period of growth, the champ, is still Reagan’s 8 years with a mixed Congress (Baker/ONeill), made all the more remarkable by the fact that he also reduced inflation the most; followed by the 6 years that Clinton and Gingrich/Lott were leading. What drags the Rs down are the recession periods 1974-1975 and 1989-1991, where we had moderate R Republicans and Democrat majorities in Congress.
The conclusion from what I see is that the case can be made that - A CONSERVATIVE in EITHER branch of Government can make for a good growth pattern, and a conservative in neither branch of Govt does not, counting Nixon/Ford and Bush41 as non-conservative Presidents facing liberal Democrat Congress. One supposes that Bush era now, with Pelosi and Reid is unfortunately falling into the non-conservative category, with economic performance to match.
It further leads to the uncomftable conclusion that the numbers point to more success if Obama is President and Republicans are running Congress than if McCain is President and Democrats run Congress.
The change we need: Dump the Democrats in Congress!
Michigan.
8.9% unemployment, brought to you by the DNC.”
Thats and excellent point. We have 50 testcases of Democrat vs Republican policies at the state level.
Texas beats the Dem-run states in job creation hands down.
And we know why. Jobs are created by businesses and Dem-run states are anti-business.
McCain was on the Senate floor in 2005 trying to stir up support for reforming what he thought was dangerous and corrupt trends in the semi-public semi-private Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac.
However, the Democrats won out and the practice of giving loans to poor people who could not afford them remained the policy...even as the directors of Fanny and Freddie made millions of bonuses for gambling big with ridiculously risky schemes of leveraging the loans of people that had a high chance of not being able to pay back.
Obama entered the scene late, but not so late he could have said something about it. I'm not sure what positions he expressed publicly ("present"?), but I understand he has received the second largest amount of contributions from Fanny in the Senate (behind Dodd).
Now it turns out McCain has some former Fanny or Freddie lobbyists hired to lobby for him now.
It also turns out that Obama has THREE of the former DIRECTORS of Fanny (or maybe it was Freddie) actually on his campaign as ADVISORS! We are talking people who gambled with tax payers and stock holders money to make millions!
Yes its all those nasty Republican's fault--NOT!
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