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The foreign policy legacy of George W. Bush

Jango said:
What is known right now is unforgivable already, so why would it 'possibly' get better?

But it will probably be much lower as years progress because of new information being declassified, be it automatically or through FOIA, just as information about other foreign policy regimes of past Presidents has given historians a more complete picture of a very secretive job and decision-making process carried out by some terrible human beings, like the "joys" the Nixon tapes have brought this country.

When Nixon was in charge, people knew he was strange, but with the tapes we get to hear the leader of the free world, the most powerful man in the world, in all his racist, drunkenly paranoid and genocidal self when he spoke with his inner circle of yes-men and periphery decision-makers.

But many U.S. historians are too "polite" to call men like Nixon or Bush what they are: tyrants. What Bush has done abroad will not soon be forgotten by foreigners or by us because we're still fighting blowback from his disastrous foreign policy, which was itself being fought on top of the blowback created by several previous administrations when their disastrous foreign policies were killing people wide and far and destroying lives on a vast scale.
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If Bush is a tyrant, then Obama must be a Tyrannosaurus rex.
 
He has egregiously abused his constitutional authority half a dozen times at least. He has deployed extremely divisive rhetoric against his political opponents. And he once ate a dog. Oh, also, when it comes to economic policy, he's a dinosaur.
 
He has egregiously abused his constitutional authority half a dozen times at least. He has deployed extremely divisive rhetoric against his political opponents. And he once ate a dog. Oh, also, when it comes to economic policy, he's a dinosaur.
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Come on man.

His economic policy has reduced unemployment, no?
 
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sunmaster14 said:
He has egregiously abused his constitutional authority half a dozen times at least. He has deployed extremely divisive rhetoric against his political opponents. And he once ate a dog. Oh, also, when it comes to economic policy, he's a dinosaur.
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Pretty much all right wing opinions. Readily available from Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck.

I do thank you for bringing it all together though.
 
NoahFence said:
Come on man.

His economic policy has reduced unemployment, no?
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No. Absolutely not. Unemployment and underemployment would be lower if he had done nothing. The Republicans forced him to discontinue the unemployment insurance extensions two years ago, and unemployment immediately went down. His economic policies have been terrible if the primary goal was job growth. Of course, there are other goals people can reasonably have, so I'm not saying that people are necessarily wrong to support those policies (although I don't).
 
DavidJames said:
Pretty much all right wing opinions. Readily available from Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck.

I do thank you for bringing it all together though.
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I don't think I have heard or read anything from those three people in months. I certainly don't form my opinions based on anything any of those guys say (although Limbaugh has some interesting insights from time to time, in contrast to Hannity or Beck).
 
sunmaster14 said:
The Republicans forced him to discontinue the unemployment insurance extensions two years ago, and unemployment immediately went down.
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It's interesting, technically when EUC08 expired in 12/13 unemployment rose, of course that was a minor blip on the already continuing downward trend of the unemployment rate that had, to that point, existed only during the time EUC08 was in effect. The trend since it's expiration does not appear to be significantly different than the couple years prior.

Of course we will never know what the actual effect on employment would have been without it, but fantasy is cool too.
 
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sunmaster14 said:
No. Absolutely not. Unemployment and underemployment would be lower if he had done nothing. The Republicans forced him to discontinue the unemployment insurance extensions two years ago, and number of people eligible to continue filing for unemployment immediately went down. His economic policies have been terrible if the primary goal was job growth. Of course, there are other goals people can reasonably have, so I'm not saying that people are necessarily wrong to support those policies (although I don't).
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Normally I oppose "FTFY" posts, but when important information is left out it begins to look like a lie by omission.
 
elbe said:
It's interesting, technically when EUC08 expired in 12/13 unemployment rose, of course that was a minor blip on the already continuing downward trend of the unemployment rate that had, to that point, existed only during the time EUC08 was in effect. The trend since it's expiration does not appear to be significantly different than the couple years prior.

Of course we will never know what the actual effect on employment would have been without it, but fantasy is cool too.
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I think it's better to use the employment-population ratio, since that captures the discouraged worker dropping out of labor force effect that was contributing to a reduction in unemployment prior to 2014. I think the graph shows a real change in slope around Jan 2014, but I guess people will see what they want to see.

In any event, there have been research papers which show that unemployment insurance extensions do contribute to unemployment.
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
Normally I oppose "FTFY" posts, but when important information is left out it begins to look like a lie by omission.
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The research papers do seem to say that most of the effect is people dropping out of the labor force. But there is some positive effect of people moving from unemployment to employment, as I would expect.
 
sunmaster14 said:
I think it's better to use the employment-population ratio, since that captures the discouraged worker dropping out of labor force effect that was contributing to a reduction in unemployment prior to 2014. I think the graph shows a real change in slope around Jan 2014, but I guess people will see what they want to see.
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Considering the trend as already existing unless you plan on doing a statistical analysis I'm not sure you can say one way or another if the expiration of the EUC08 at the end of 2012 had that much of an impact or if other factors were in play (for example, increased confidence in the workforce, or the feedback cycle of more workers become more consumers creating more workers).

In any event, there have been research papers which show that unemployment insurance extensions do contribute to unemployment.
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It's nice you bothered to provide at least somewhat useful sources, though I'm not super happy about the paywall (que sera, sera). So the second paper, the one analyzing the recent decade, the summary appears to find that the insurance extension reduced by a small amount the number of people who stop looking for work and increase by a small amount the time people spend on unemployment insurance (which is obvious, ja?). Unless the full paper has a better explanation I don't think this is fully supporting your position the way you think it is. As for the other, well the summary wasn't super clear on what they're conclusions were; it lacks the nuance of specifics.
 
Upchurch said:
Iraq was certainly the greatest foreign policy mistake of my lifetime, which would narrows out your whole list.
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Even as someone who likes W. and thinks he'll be better regarded by history than talking heads today, I can agree with this statement. Iraq could have been the start of something good for the middle-east, but it wasn't executed well enough to accomplish that goal. It may not have even been possible to do it well enough...
 
sunmaster14 said:
I think it's better to use the employment-population ratio, since that captures the discouraged worker dropping out of labor force effect that was contributing to a reduction in unemployment prior to 2014. I think the graph shows a real change in slope around Jan 2014, but I guess people will see what they want to see.
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Honest question: The labor participation rate peaked in 2000 (right about the time the first Baby Boomers reached optimum retirement age--but it's more complicated than that), has been dropping ever since, and is expected to drop for the next 10 years no matter who is the president.

Do we know the percentage of them are "discouraged workers" dropping out?
 
twinstead said:
Honest question: The labor participation rate peaked in 2000 (right about the time the first Baby Boomers reached optimum retirement age--but it's more complicated than that), has been dropping ever since, and is expected to drop for the next 10 years no matter who is the president.

Do we know the percentage of them are "discouraged workers" dropping out?
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I've seen references to reports that try to tease this out. It's probably straightforward to separate out the effect of a demographic shift (i.e. aging population), since that is easy to quantify. Harder to separate are the effects of government policies (i.e. benefits and taxes), which are constantly shifting. IIRC, roughly half of the decline in labor force participation was due to discouraged workers, and half was due to more voluntary effects. I think in recent years (1-2 years), discouraged workers have been rejoining the workforce on net.
 
sunmaster14 said:
No. Absolutely not. Unemployment and underemployment would be lower if he had done nothing. The Republicans forced him to discontinue the unemployment insurance extensions two years ago, and unemployment immediately went down. His economic policies have been terrible if the primary goal was job growth. Of course, there are other goals people can reasonably have, so I'm not saying that people are necessarily wrong to support those policies (although I don't).
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Of course.

Take reality, report the exact opposite. Conservative 101.
 
sunmaster14 said:
He has egregiously abused his constitutional authority half a dozen times at least. He has deployed extremely divisive rhetoric against his political opponents. And he once ate a dog. Oh, also, when it comes to economic policy, he's a dinosaur.
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This posting is so very wrong.

There are many people who claim that Obama has abused his constitutional authority, and yet none of them can specifically state just was abused. Even when those stupid, idiotic, lying Republicans tried to sue Obama, they could not even figure out what to sue him for.

I expect that every President has used "extremely divisive rhetoric against his political opponents" and that every non-President has also used "extremely divisive rhetoric against his political opponents".

As for the Obama economic policy, that has been a real success.
 
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