Juan Cole: Top Ten Ways We are Better Off Than in January 2009

[Hissyspit]

http://www.juancole.com/2012/09/top-ten-ways-we-are-better-off-than-in-january-2009.html

Top Ten Ways we are Better off than in January 2009

Posted on 09/06/2012 by Juan

It is breathtaking impudence that Republicans should try to campaign on whether we are better off than were were in the last six months of the Bush administration. I can’t believe we are even arguing about this. Seriously? The country had fallen off a cliff in the last years of Bush, or rather had been pushed off one by GOP policies.

1. In January 2009 we lost 600,000 jobs. In 2008 over-all, we lost 2.6 million jobs, the most in 6 decades! We’re now adding over 100,000 jobs a month.

2. Home mortgage foreclosures had spiked 80% in 2008!

3. We were at war in Iraq in January, 2009, with 314 American troops killed in 2008 in what had become a fruitless quagmire launched on false pretexts in contravention of international law. The US military is out of Iraq, despite the lobbying of the Republican Party and elements in the Pentagon to try to stay there in the teeth of Iraqi opposition.

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6. Non-hydro renewable energy only supplied 3% of American electricity; now it is nearly 6%, in large part because of Obama incentives. Green energy reduces carbon dioxide emissions and so helps decrease the worst effects of global warming, and its increases US energy inedependence.

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10. Dick Cheney was vice president!

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