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"First of all, I don't put people on food stamps. People become eligible for food stamps. Second of all, the initial expansion of food-stamp eligibility happened under my Republican predecessor, not under me. Number three, when you have a disastrous economic crash that results in 8 million people losing their jobs, more people are going to need more support from government."

60 Minutes, as usual, had a very nearly excellent program last week on the economic collapse, and they were all upset because no one has been arrested; no particular person appears to be under investigation.  They have a good reason to be upset, but they seemed, at least in this report (and in several previous programs), to be clueless as to why. What happened at the end of 2008 changed history and the direction of the United States.  Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson goes to President George Bush and tells him, “The banks in the United States are about to collapse. ...

Sources tell ABC News that the president will announce today that US troops in Iraq will draw down to zero by the end of the year. A White House official says that at approximately 11:30am today, President Obama convened a secure video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to talk with him about this news.

The evidence continues to cast strong doubts on the attorney general's truthfulness. Friday was just another day in a continuing series of bad days for the administration of President Barack Obama, as the furor surrounding the executive branch’s gun-walking scandal continues to escalate. The day began with a gritty montage-style video from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asking the question few in the media are willing to ask about the gun-walking program: Holder vs. White House: Who Is Responsible? Like a duffel bag stuffed with straw-purchased Draco pistols, the day quickly went “south” from there.The White House...

Sept. 11 unified America. But President George W. Bush "squandered" this shared sense of purpose. We still hear this drivel, mostly from the left, 10 years after the terror attacks. But how did Bush blow this alleged consensus, this shared sense of purpose presumably expected to last, well, forever? Bush's critics pretty much give the same three reasons. First, "America was ready to sacrifice," they say, but Bush made no demands. "Go shopping," Bush urged Americans, a comment that somehow came to symbolize Bush's alleged wrong-footedness as commander in chief. He blew it! Why, he should have convened a joint...

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

Obama: I Underestimated Magnitude Of The Recession        Advertisements [?]   Source: Talking Points Memo President Obama openly acknowledged underestimating the length and magnitude of the worst recession since the Great Depression in a response to a question during his Twitter town hall. Always a tough question to answer, Obama was asked what mistakes he made in handling the economic crisis and what he would have done differently looking back on his first months in office. Obama freely admitted that he would have tried to do a better job explaining "to the American people it was going to take a...

...Obama will hold a news conference on Wednesday morning at 11:30am EDT, giving reporters the chance to ask....

Your average poorly informed lefty (but I repeat myself) will reliably tell you that our current fiscal straits are the result of three things: 1. Bush’s wars; 2. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich; 3. Bush’s bank bailouts. That is not true, of course: The main bank bailouts (odious as they were) have been paid back, often at a profit. The money-losing parts (and the likely money-losing parts) are the ones insisted upon by Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues: the foreclosure-prevention programs, the endless maintenance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc. The Iraq War, in its most expensive...

<p>Voters delivered an understandable rebuke to Democrats -- 30 million people looking for work, wages declining, millions of homes under water. The economy is a mess; it hasn't be fixed. Democrats paid the price.</p> <p>Republicans ran as wolves in sheep's clothing. Sobered by Tea Party challenges in their primaries, Republican candidates suddenly became populist tribunes. They indicted Democrats for running up deficits to bail out the banks without doing anything about jobs, even as incoming House Speaker John Boehner gathered the bank lobbyists together to offer Republicans as their protectors.</p>

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Reid: Don't blame me for high unemployment in Nevada By Jordan Fabian - 09/07/10 12:31 PM ET Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday expressed confidence in his prospects for reelection and said that voters should not blame him for economic woes in his state and around the country. In a wide-ranging interview with ABC News that aired on an afternoon webcast, Reid said that he has worked hard as majority leader to create jobs and should not be held accountable for Nevada and the nation's continuing economic woes. "It would take a real stretch to think I caused...

Are you sick of Obama and the left unrelentingly blaming Bush for everything that is happening going on two years after he left office? Do you think that Obama will ever man-up and actually become responsible for his presidency? Me too, and me neither, respectively. I went more than a little off on a liberal who dredged up this demagogic rhetorical garbage: 2010/08/20 at 8:24 pm In Europe people laugh at us leaving in false dreams, wall streets spending false money, Bush starting a false war etc. America is the land of dreams, how come? Idiots like George Bush can...

According to the preview offered by Vanity Fair: [Todd] Purdum spends a day inside the West Wing and talks to Obama’s top aides, who tell him about the challenges of playing the Beltway game, ugly as it has become, even as their boss insists they find a way to transcend it. “There’s a relentlessness to this that’s unlike anything else, especially when you come into office in a time of crisis,” says Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. “We did not exactly ease into the tub. The world is so much smaller, and events reverberate much more quickly, and one person...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says he expects to be held accountable by people who can't find jobs, but he contends that voters will remember who caused the economic mess in the first place - and it wasn't him. Obama says Americans don't have, as he put it, a "selective memory."

Banner headline at Foxnews. 0.5% drop.

Jimmy Buffett, a singer famed for his laid-back island tunes, had some harsh words for the people he claims are responsible for the BP oil spill - the administration of former President George W. Bush. The Obama-supporting musician told the Associated Press on Tuesday that he believed the Bush administration was responsible for the crisis, due to their alleged ties to oil companies. "To me it was more about eight years of bad policy before [Obama] got there that let this happen," said Buffett. "It was Dracula running the blood bank in terms of oil and leases." Buffett will be...

The BP oil disaster was custom-made for The Obama. It’s a disaster that not only destroys jobs and the lives of the affected humans but, is killing off all wildlife it touches. The effective oil-skimmer systems utilized by the Saudis and others would work to greatly minimize the damage being caused to the US Gulf Coast. But, The Obama continues to drag his heels as States and lives are destroyed. Note: Obama, of course, remains aloof and untouched and continues to refuse all offers of help--only those that truly WILL help--as he smilingly watches and fiddles like Nero while the...

If you want to see where President Barack Obama’s response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster is heading, try following the urgings of the Center for American Progress. The liberal think tank with close White House ties appears to have more influence on spill policy than the president’s in-house advisers. On May 4, for instance, the CAP’s energy and environment expert, Daniel Weiss, called on the president to name an independent commission to look at the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. On May 22, he did just that. On May 21, CAP president, John Podesta, privately implored White House officials...

CNN's Candy Crowley asks Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC): "When does the statute of limitations run out on blaming the Bush administration and when is it on you all as the governing -- really in the House and the Senate and the White House. When does the economy your baby, so to speak?"