Mark & Juanita wrote:

That is one of the most asinine statements that the left mutters.
What exactly made things so bad from 2000 to 2008?

Hmm, I was in San Jose debugging silicon for a cable modem and working
with a bunch of H1B types from south Asia when Chairman Greenspan
announced his intention to "cool the tech sector". Over the next month I
watched more than 2500 newly incomeless families move out of my
apartment complex before I joined them.

It was a bit wrenching for the H1B folks too, they had to take their
jobs back to New Delhi and Mumbai where they worked harder and for less,
but /they/ had the jobs and we did not.

Suggested research: who voted for the legislation that allowed US
companies to replace currently employed Americans with less qualified
(but much cheaper) Asians?

The fact you got to keep more of your money instead of paying it in
taxes? EVERYBODY got a tax cut, not just the wealthy few despite the
continued mouthings of the left to the contrary.

You may not have noticed, but those tax cuts didn't do much for the
folks whose jobs went swimming across the Pacific. Of course, neither
did we pay taxes on no income.

The fact that the US actually took the fight to terrorists and
terrorist supporting countries after 40 years of letting crap happen
and then issuing strongly worded condemnations?

A masterful stroke that. An invasion plan without a success contingency.
We succeeded in cutting the European petroleum supply by something like
20%, which trashed European economies and resulted in making the
Europeans dependent on Gazprom (but it did produce a windfall in wealth
and clout for the Russian Federation) which persists to this day.

On the grounds that it was a US theater of action, we closed the door to
European (and other) countries who wanted to help with the much-needed
reconstruction, and handed out non-competitive construction contracts to
US firms with close ties to top administration officials.

AIUI, Baghdad /still/ doesn't have electricity and a working water
supply 24/7, and the US has managed to kill many times more innocents
than Al Qaida. Which reminds me to ask: "Where /is/ Osama Bin Laden
days? Will he be vacationing in the Swat Valley area?"

I wish you could tell me (and I could believe) that what we did has put
an end to "letting crap happen". AFAICT, we just stirred it around and,
in the process, got a lot on ourselves.

The fact that the US had the lowest unemployment rates in history
during that time, dipping below the 5% that was considered to be full
employment?

Super-size that, sir?

The fact that the US economy recovered spectacularly following 9/11
despite the shock upon our financial system?

Did you notice how many Yuan that took? Spectacular, indeed!

Or was it simply the fact that France hated the US during that time?
Hint: they still ain't happy with us despite the fact that The One
was elected.

If the French came to hate us, it was /after/ October 2001. I suspect
that if they caused /our/ petroleum supply to drop by as much as we
caused theirs to drop, we wouldn't be very happy with them (or with
paying a /lot/ more than $4/gallon for gas).

Awfully unreasonable of them, don't you think?

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/