Yanno, to couch things in "the last 8 years" denies the truth ......

[Stinky The Clown]

"They did this to us for the last 8 years>"

"We had to deal with that for the last 8 years, so now they can."

And so forth .......

That makes the issue one about bush and cheenee and their reign.

But that is so short sighted. Before Bush we had Clinton. And 8 years of ankle biting escalating to all out political thermonuclear war. Government shutdowns. Party line votes. Impeachment.

Before that we had 12 years of stealthier war criminals. Poppy and his Middle East adventure. St Ronnie and his systematic attempt to dismantle the New Deal.

That's 28 years.

We could also include the Carter years aa four that were controlled by the repubicans. That would be 32 years.

Of course, if we include then, we can easily ad on the the Nixon/Ford years to bring the total to 40 years.

Arguably, our last turn at actually being in charge was in the Kennedy/Johnson era.

A lot of people weren't even born back then!

No .... this is not about the last 8 years. It is about SEVERAL GENERATIONS of REPUBICAN SCORCHED EARTH policies.

[Warpy]

1. I keep trying to point out that liberals went out of power in 1969

when Nixon was voted in on a wave of anti hippie and anti black sentiment from people who really should have known better but didn't.

Yes, we've had 40 years of conservative mismanagement by conservatives in both parties. Both Carter and Clinton were typical southern conservative Democrats, although Carter was the better of the two.

I'm just hoping the current anti banker rage will keep the conservatives on the run now, just like it did in the 1930s when people finally understood the Depression had been created by the greed of the financial sector and their own oppression for so many years.

My whole working life has been cursed by the horrible economic policies of the conservatives. I just hope the end of it benefits by a return to liberalism.

Only liberals were ever able to run this country so its economy benefited most of us.

[FiveGoodMen]

3. "Only liberals were ever able to run this country so its economy benefited most of us"

Only liberals were ever trying to benefit most of us.

[Warpy]

4. Oh, the supply siders actually believed Milton Friedman

and all the other snake oil peddlers that prosperity would magically appear for all of us if only the rich were sufficiently fattened that they'd hand out jobs like a massive private welfare program and all would be sunny in the garden.

Haven't you seen all those smug looks changing to sheer panic? They had no idea this stuff would only create an aristocracy mirroring the one their ancestors fled in Europe.

[Sebastian Doyle]

5. I always ask right wingers to name one GOOD thing conservatives have ever done for this country.

The best they can manage is some mythological bullshit about Reagan "defeating" Communism, or Chimpy "protecting us from terraists".

[FiveGoodMen]

7. But THEY really believe their nonsense. That's what we have to overcome.

Somehow...:shrug:

[unblock]

9. that myth about reagan really drives me nuts, especially because it undercuts their own argument

for 7 decades, democrats and republicans very consistently said that capitalism was better than communism and that ultimately we would prevail and they would fail because capitalism is better than communism.

even reagan himself said this.

then the reagan worshippers decided to chuck all that good stuff about a triumph for capitalism and credit it all to a one-liner by a senile old goat after the writing was both literally and figuratively on the wall.

so communism ultimately failed, we are to believe, for no other reason than that reagan was great. damn good thing he came along when he did, i guess. that basically puts capitalism back on the same footing as communism. i suppose we are to think that if reagan had been born in russia we would have failed instead.

[napoleon_in_rags]

2. U r very smart. Check this out:

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-10-inflation

particularly about 5 minutes in to the first movie on the page. This big inflationary debt curve started with Nixon, and its been a slowly exploding in our faces ever since, and not its just heading toward the fan with resource and energy exploitation. Bush didn't start this fire, he just threw gasoline all over it.

[KG]

6. oh, puh-leeze! didn't you get the memo? it's all ralphs fault!

:eyes:

[blindpig]

8. What's the common denominator?

*CAPITALISM*

[Laelth]

10. True, but I like the turf Obama and team have chosen to fight on.

You're right, of course, but many Americans still think Ronnie is a saint. It would be a waste of energy to fight against a dead saint. You're much more likely to win against a living moran and Darth Cheney (can't say whether he's really alive). Obama is smart enough to know the truth, and you have described it accurately, but Obama has chosen to pin Reaganomics on Shrub, and I think that's a winning rhetorical strategy to defeat Reaganomics, even if you can never defeat the ghost of Reagan.

:dem:

-Laelth