I was watching CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night and they had a piece on Sarah Palin. Cooper interviews a reporter and asks about the Governor’s private jet that Sarah Palin sold. The reporter said that the jet sold for $600,000 less than what it was worth. The insinuation was that Sarah Palin’s “sale” may have been great for her own personal publicity, but was a poor deal for the state.
Not true. NOT TRUE! The jet sold for $600,000 less than it’s new purchase price. That is a huge difference. Things tend to sell for a little less when they’re used, Anderson.
Thanks to Sarah Palin’s personal decision as incoming Governor, the state of Alaska had $2.1 million dollars that it otherwise wouldn’t have had.
The snide allusions are simply unrelenting.
You literally have to already know the news in order to watch the news anymore.
Having said that, consider carefully what you believe in the avalanche of bad press about the Bush economy. It aint the best it’s ever been, that’s true. It aint even the best it’s ever been during the Bush years. But in the grand scheme, it just aint that bad.
The Gateway Pundit had this to say a few months ago:
Bush Unemployment at 5.0%- Bad… Clinton Unemployment at 5.4%- Good
Something you will never hear from the mainstream news…
The average unemployment rate during the Bush years is running lower than during the Clinton years.
Numbers from US Misery IndexJune 7, 1996– Here is how the mainstream news (Dan Rather) reported that the unemployment rate jumped up to 5.6%:
“The government came out today with its latest report on unemployment. It says the unemployment rate rose slightly, 2/10ths of a point last month, up to 5.6 percent – still low overall. And the numbers, pure and simple, can be misleading. Economics correspondent Ray Brady tonight has the story behind them.”
January 4, 2007– And, here is how the AP reported on the current unemployment rate of 5.0% today:
Hiring practically stalled in December, driving the nation’s unemployment rate up to a two-year high of 5 percent and fanning fears of a recession.
Employers last month added the fewest new jobs to their payrolls in more than four years, according to the employment report released Friday by the Labor Department. The report showed that employment conditions are deteriorating, strained by a housing slump and credit crunch that are sapping economic strength.
“The economy is getting hit by some body blows. The big question is whether the economy can withstand it or will it take a fall,” said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.
UPDATE: Here’s CNN’s headline today:
“Jobs weak, unemployment soars”
Since when is a 5% unemployment rate described as soaring?MORE… The clueless call this a disaster.
So just let me make mention of the fact that the media are overwhelmingly snide, snotty, smarmy, and flat-out ideologically biased.
The media routinely misrepresent the economy, and they have been doing it for years.
When you consider the economy decade by decade, the unemployment rate this decade is better than it was during the 1990s, better than the 80s, better than the 70s, and better than the 60s.
Tags: Bill Clinton, Economy, George Bush, John McCain, Media, misery index, Sarah Palin, unemployment, unemployment rate
Start Thinking Right 
September 9, 2008 at 11:41 am
In the European original Germanic languages [German, Flemish, Nederlands] when a storage unit [a trunk, or a box or a bin] is full to the brim we say the storage unit is laden [like in English fully laden]. So here we would say:
Osama: bin Laden. Obama: bin Empty.
September 9, 2008 at 1:45 pm
He’s empty of one kind of thing (useful ideas that will bring this country success) and full of another kind of thing.
I am delighted to meet a fellow conservative brother from Belgium.
The United States and Europe are both stronger when we can unite behind conservative principles in order to advance both a strong defense (against terrorism and tyranny) and a strong economy based on democratic principles and fiscal conservatism.
February 8, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Average unemployment rates:
Reagan 7.54%
Bush1 6.30%
Clinton 5.21%
Bush2 5.27%
February 9, 2009 at 7:34 am
Desertphile,
I don’t remember my own article very well, but do know that it didn’t include the stats from the meltdown.
There’s only so much you can draw from an “average” rate like this. For example, I wrote an article describing the near 12% unemployment rate that Carter left Reagan with. The economy was in a shambles. He turned it around, but it took time, and the “average” was affected. There was a bad market crash in 87 that hurt Bush going into his term. Clinton, on the other hand, benefitted from the fact that the economy had started to recover BEFORE he took office, and Bush II was harmed by the fact that Clinton left Bush with an economy stumbling into recession.
Right now, for instance, Obama’s “average” unemployment rate aint looking very good. Whether you choose to lay the blame at his feet, or blame Bush, is and largely WILL be subjective.
June 27, 2010 at 6:00 am
Stumbled across your article on a web search and typically you bend the truth way right. When Carter left office, the Unemployment rate was 7.5%. 8 months later with the rate at 7.2 %, Reagan decided to “fix” it with the famous “Economic Recovery Act” and unemployment went to 10.8% a year and 3 months later. Clinton turned the tide on unemployment and it declined nearly every single month he was in office. Bush took over a 3.9% rate and left a severely depressed economy in financial ruins and 7.8% unemployment rate on a severe upswing. You can’t change facts, but you can try to cloud them with averages. When you average the Bush years, you average in the 3.9% rate that he clearly was not reponsible for and he ruined. When you blame Obama you ignore where we were headed before he was elected. Bush rode this ship into the iceberg and Obama is trying to save the people. Or, to borrow a much used phrase, you can try to put lipstick on a pig…..
June 28, 2010 at 8:17 am
I’m not exactly sure why you bring up Reagan, given the fact that I never mention him A SINGLE TIME. You pretend that I’m the one obfuscating, but you drag in a completely unrelated subject and try to change the point.
But, okay. You want to talk about Reagan? Let’s talk about Reagan.
Unemployment DID go up the year following Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981. But what you refuse to consider is that unemployment was the very LEAST of Reagan’s worries left behind by Jimmy Carter. You don’t bother mentioning that interest rates were at an economy murdering 21%. You don’t mention that inflation was at a shocking (and once again economy murdering 13.5%. You fail to mention that the misery index, the combination of both unemployment and the inflation rate, was at a shocking, staggering 20.5%.
Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”
That was the real legacy of Jimmy Carter that you entirely omit. And nobody on the left had an answer to the rising inflation that was poisoning the nation. How in the hell was Reagan supposed to create jobs given that death-by-malaise that Carter had created??? When it cost that kind of exorbitant interest to capitalize anything, how were you supposed to create jobs???
THAT was the real problem facing Reagan. And it was a huge problem that no one knew how to solve.
Ronald Regan DID have an answer, but it took some time to stop the inflation that Democrats had created and had no answer for and turn that unsolvable dilemma around. It took time to turn around the sky-high interest rates that were a symptom of the inflation crisis that Democrats had no answer for. It took time to undo that horrible misery index that Democrats had created and had no answer for.
Now let’s get to Bush and further destroy your argument. When Bush left office, unemployment was at 7.6% (not the 7.8% you erroneously claim). Which is virtually identical with the 7.5% unemployment rate you claimed Carter left with. For the sake of argument, given Reagan’s presidency is now ancient history, I’ll agree that Reagan should resign in disgrace for increasing unemployment (even though Reagan had problems with inflation, interest rates, and misery index rates that Obama did NOT have) if you agree that Obama should resign in disgrace for creating higher unemployment than Reagan did. Which kind of proves how utterly full of crap your gibberish argument is. Because your own argument would prove that Obama is a total failure, the Democrat Congress that have been in office since 2006 are total failures, and both should be replaced. True ideologue that you are, you’ll only accept that if it hurts Republicans.
You lie about unemployment going to 10.8% a year for Reagan. It went to 9.7% for the very highest year, in 1982. He brought it down every year thereafter.
One thing Reagan DIDN’T do was pass some mind-bogglingly stupid $3.27 trillion stimulus porker and promise that he’d hold unemployment down under 8%, like Obama did. Ronnie saved us that massive spending debt, and then did a better job on unemployment without porkulus than Obama did with it. You should factor that into your bullcrap analysis, too.
Oh, and by the way, Reagan proceeded to dramatically reduce unemployment. Do you know that Obama is saying that unemployment will still be terribly high even after his full four year term, that it will be higher when he leaves office than it was when he came in? Reagan sure never said that – and in fact turned unemployment around – and in fact so turned the economy around that we basically had a twenty year period of overall prosperity which in fact included the Clinton years. Which still further destroys your argument. Reagan DID something to solve his crisis.
Oh, and by the way, Reagan also didn’t get the census to use to artificially pump up his employment numbers, like Obama has. Bush didn’t get to benefit from that damn boondoggle either.
Furthermore, it is Ronald Reagan who is now recognized to be the greatest president in history according to Gallup. NOT Clinton. And Reagan was such an incredible president that he was even able to transcend biased, distorted, poisonous, ideological leftwing media propaganda to be recognized as the greatest president.
Now, here are the unemployment rate figures for the entire period between Bush 1’s last year, and Obama’s misrule:
YEAR………….LABOR FORCE…….EMPLOYED……UNEMPLOYED……UNEMP RATE
2010 YTD Average 153,517,600 138,158,800 15,358,800 10.0%
2009 08BM 154,142,000 139,877,000 14,265,000 9.3%
2008 08BM 154,287,000 145,362,000 8,924,000 5.8%
2007 08BM 153,124,000 146,047,000 7,078,000 4.6%
2006 08BM 151,428,000 144,427,000 7,001,000 4.6%
2005 08BM 149,320,000 141,730,000 7,591,000 5.1%
2004 147,401,000 139,252,000 8,149,000 5.5%
2003 146,510,000 137,736,000 8,774,000 6.0%
2002 144,863,000 136,485,000 8,378,000 5.8%
2001 143,734,000 136,933,000 6,801,000 4.7%
2000 142,583,000 136,891,000 5,692,000 4.0%
1999 139,368,000 133,488,000 5,880,000 4.2%
1998 137,673,000 131,463,000 6,210,000 4.5%
1997 136,297,000 129,558,000 6,739,000 4.9%
1996 133,943,000 126,708,000 7,236,000 5.4%
1995 132,304,000 124,900,000 7,404,000 5.6%
1994 131,056,000 123,060,000 7,996,000 6.1%
1993 129,200,000 120,259,000 8,940,000 6.9%
1992 128,105,000 118,492,000 9,613,000 7.5%
1991 126,346,000 117,718,000 8,628,000 6.8%
1990 125,840,000 118,793,000 7,047,000 5.6%
1989 123,869,000 117,342,000 6,528,000 5.3%
1988 121,669,000 114,968,000 6,701,000 5.5%
1987 119,865,000 112,440,000 7,425,000 6.2%
1986 117,834,000 109,597,000 8,237,000 7.0%
1985 115,462,000 107,150,000 8,312,000 7.2%
1984 113,544,000 105,005,000 8,539,000 7.5%
1983 111,551,000 100,834,000 10,717,000 9.6%
1982 110,204,000 99,526,000 10,678,000 9.7%
1981 108,670,000 100,397,000 8,273,000 7.6%
1980 106,940,000 99,303,000 7,637,000 7.1%
And, yes, you most certainly CAN use averages for a president’s entire term, you nitwit. You average unemployment over a president’s entire term for the same reason that a 1-year unemployment figure is more informative than a 1-month unemployment figure. Clinton assumed office just as a bad recession was ending. He got to benefit from an economy that was starting to roar back. And yet, he screwed up so badly that we had the largest political slaughter in US history only two years later, and Republicans took control. By contrast, Bush 2 took office just as we were going into a recession. None of his policies had anything to do with it because he didn’t even have his cabinet in place yet, much less transform entrenched economic policiy; it was all on Clinton’s economy. Then, Bush almost immediately got nailed with 9/11, which was simply massive in its economic devastation.
But when you look at the whole, Bush did as good – and in fact slightly better – over his presidency than Clinton did with his, even though Clinton had all the benefits and Bush had all the bad hands that weren’t his fault.
But there’s something more: Congress. It’s not just a president who is to blame for good times and bad that affect employment. Only Congress has the power to spend, not the president. Because of that 1994 Republican Revolution, Clinton was forced to do things Republicans’ way. And the country prospered from that. But it sure didn’t prosper when Democrats took over both the House and Senate in 2006. When Democrats took over was when things started to go to hell.
September 27, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Michael-I voted for clinton twice and bush II twice-please explain to me why one party is better than the other-you have quoted some fine stats for both parties-however i have not seen either party solve the healthcare problem, the immigration problem, the dependence on foreign oil problem, the rising and lowering and rising unemployment problem, the deficit spending problem, the lobbying problem, the earmark problem, the unethical financial industry problem, too many problems to list problem!!!
Both parties have enjoyed majority rule and minority rule with each of these sitting presidents but no real change ever seems to occur on the major issues i have mentioned.
Why should i side with democrats or republicans when their party views are so biased that they each take credit and place blame each year for whatever it is they claim to have passed or blocked. I have not seen either side do anything but argue each others supremacy and voters follow suit by putting a new party in congress or the white house every few years hoping the next bunch will deliver on their so-called promises.
Help me understand how anyone can have so much conviction for either side when each party appears to only have true convictions when its election time.
September 28, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Republicrat,
I can only answer for myself.
That said, it’s not that I can’t explain as much as that there are so many ways to explain why the Republican Party is superior.
First, for me, is the issue of life. Democrats are pro-abortion; it’s in their platform. Republicans are pro-life; it’s in their platform. That is about as stark as it gets. There’s no way you can be 50-50 on that.
Then there is the issue of fidelity to our Constitution, and the vision of our founding fathers. Do you think the founding fathers were profoundly wise men who created a document that was so incredible that it literally changed the world? Or do you agree with Barack Obama that “we can say that the Constitution reflected the enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day and that the framers had that same blind spot”??? Should we accept this document literally, or should we be governed by the penumbras and emanations of unelected judges??? The Republican Party stands for taking our Constitution literally; the Democrat Party stands for penumbras and emanations that allow them to literally create rights or take them away out of scratch.
Do you agree with Thomas Jefferson, who said:
Or do you agree with the Democrat Party’s vision of judicial activism, by which a judge can impose abortion, gay marriage, or whatever the hell they want, upon our society?
Obama said:
Do you want a Democrat Party and a president who says, “We will pick judges who will reshape society the way that we want” – in a frankly Marxist vision – or do you want a Party that will pick judges on the basis of a strict constructionist understanding of the Constitution and the founding fathers’ vision???
Or we can go with budget deficits. Bill Clinton gets all the credit by the mainstream media for being the president who “balanced the budget.” But you know that’s a load of hooey, don’t you? Article One of the Constitution tells us that it is the CONGRESS, NOT the president, who have the power to spend money. Bill Clinton suffered the most massive loss in American history in losing both the House and the Senate. And it was the Republican Party, acting on the first platform of their “Contract with America,” that forced Bill Clinton to live with a balanced budget.
Let’s look over the last few years:
For the record, the last budget from a Republican President AND a Republican Congress – FY-2007 (passed in 2006) – resulted in a$161 billion deficit at a time when unemployment was 4.6%. That’s what happened the last time the GOP was in control.
What happened when the Democrats took control in January 2007? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi passed a FY-2008 budget that had a $459 billion deficit – nearly three times the deficit in the immediately previous Republican-passed budget. Three times. And this before the financial crisis that somehow “necessitated” all this massive spending.
Now Democrats have giving us $1.6 TRILLION budget deficits. TEN TIMES the last Republican budget. And, of course, Democrats are now not even BOTHERING to pass a budget anymore.
Democrats attacked Republican spending as “out of control” and “fiscally irresponsible” in order to gain power. But now the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats.
Both parties have been bad. But the Democrats have been ten times worse – literally.
What about taxation? Do you think that our problem is that we don’t tax enough, or that we spend too much? Let me put it this way: Do you believe that the people belong to the state, or do you believe that the state belongs to the people? Do you believe that the government owns all of your property, and allows you to keep whatever they decide? Or do you believe that your property ought to belong to you? Do you believe in Marxist class warfare and socialist redistributionism, or do you believe in the principles of smaller, more limited government as opposed to a giant federal octopus, individual freedom as opposed to government power, and free market economics as opposed to a centralized economy, according to the classical liberalism that is now clearly best represented by the Republican Party?
The Democrats took over health care and massively socialized a system that was already WAY TOO SOCIALIZED before they messed it up even more. Do you like ObamaCare, or are you opposed to it as the overwhelming majority of Americans are? How about the stimulus that didn’t create any jobs? Want more porkulus boondoggles? Do you want cap-and-trade minus all the jobs it will destroy?
Now, please understand, I am not trying to say the Republicans are wonderful. They aren’t. Unless you compare them to Democrats.
If you ever find a political party that’s perfect, don’t join it – or else you’d ruin it. And by that, I mean that you have two parties, and they clearly are nothing alike. You have to choose between imperfect, even badly flawed, parties. You need to pick a side, based on principles and values. And then stick with that party and do your best to reform it from within.
July 13, 2011 at 2:59 am
I love how people lie with graphs. Please don’t act like a .01 percent decrease is worth the whole wad of space you placed on that graph and it’s a huge misconception for the general public. Are you seriously gonna give one hundredth of a difference any credit. Please stop writing anything cause you are obviously statistically and mathematically retarded.
July 13, 2011 at 1:31 pm
The only liar around here is YOU, anonymous.
At the time I wrote this article (September of 2008), George Bush in fact had a BETTER average unemployment rate than did Bill Clinton. By the time Bush was officially out of office, his rate was 5.2%, the same as Clinton’s.
This is a very interesting fact, given the way I STILL hear liberals saying that the streets were paved with gold while Clinton was president, while the Bush years were somehow worse than the Great Depression.
For the record, this in SPITE of the fact that Bill Clinton had the DotCom Bubble begin under his watch before he left office, and that “little” bubble literally wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq and vaporized $7.1 TRILLION in value.
If you want to say that people (Democrats, the mainstream media) have given Bush the same credit they gave Clinton for creating jobs, then you’re right; the difference isn’t that great. But you WON’T, so the fact that Bush did such a good job pretty much proves who the “statistically and mathmatically retarded” people really are. It’s YOUR side.
July 2, 2012 at 2:55 pm
I quite like looking through a post that can make men and women think. Also, thank you for permitting me to comment!
July 2, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Anonymous,
Appreciate the gracious words – AND the comment.
We live in such an age of deception it is beyond unreal. We are being fed packaged lies and too many Americans sit passively back in a spirit of delusion and let it get pumped into their brains.