The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007, the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress.

The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.

For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is "Bush's Fault", think about this:
January 3rd, 2007, the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress:

The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77
The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%
The Unemployment rate was 4.6%
George Bush's Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION!
Remember that day...
January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee.
The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy?
BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES!
THANK YOU DEMOCRATS (especially Barney ) for taking us from 13,000 DOW, 3.5 GDP and 4.6% Unemployment...to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES!
(BTW: Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie -starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy). Barney blocked it and called it a "Chicken Little Philosophy" (and the sky did fall!)
And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac? OBAMA!
And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie?
OBAMA and the Democrat Congress, especially BARNEY!!!!
So when someone tries to blame Bush...
REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007.... THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!"
Bush may have been in the car but the Democrats were in charge of the gas pedal and steering wheel they were driving the economy into the ditch.
Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party.
Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 & 2009 as well as 2010 & 2011.
In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.
For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budget.
And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009. Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.
If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is "I inherited a deficit that I voted for, and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th."
There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!

"The problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living."


Where to start? Help!

I broke my leg this past July... hairline fracture of the distal fibula... the doc feared the bones would separate and I'd need surgery unless I really babied it for many weeks. That was enough to scare me into following orders! I'm not one for doing that, donchano Toe to thigh splint for a week... cast for three more... working from my bed with a laptop... boyfriend bringing food upstairs to me. I had a hummingbird feeder on the small balcony off my bedroom for entertainment beyond the TV and DVD player. I have a split level townhouse. I tried not doing the stairs more than twice a day. First half of the day in bed, the second half in Grandma's wingback chair after a 15 minute walk down the stairs. Clunky, strappy boot for three weeks after that allowed me to return to working at the office. I broke five toes in my teens (mostly surfing) but that was it. I really wasn't prepared for this! Healthy, 50+ like you... but your story is so much better!

A guy in the building where I work broke his leg earlier in the year... he was trampled underfoot in a mosh pit at a Motorhead concert! Now THAT is a leg break story to be proud of! All I did was forget my earrings on my way to work. That is the butterfly wing-beating that started the sequence that lead to my fracture.

I was in the car, opened the garage door, slipped on my shades, started the car, looked in the mirror to apply lipstick, saw I had no earrings... argh! Turned car off, closed garage door, flung open the door that leads to my living room, RAN FULL SPEED up the short flight of stairs... in the dark... without turning the light on... still wearing the darkest pair of sunglasses I could buy... missed a step, came crashing down sideways onto my left calf... KEEEEEEEEE-RACK!! That sound still kills me just to think about it. Now, I'm a very busy woman who prides herself on getting a lot done... this was pure torture. Hobble... like my great-grandmother at 99... that's all I could think... that wasn't bad when you think of that sharp, toothache-like pain that shot up my leg if I put too much pressure on it. Crutches... later a cane... holy cowbell, what a mess. I'm device free now! My leg still hurts if it gets chilly, or if I walk or stand for too long. Shopping carts make for a good stealth walker... no one really knows you're hobbling But I can walk, and I can stand, and I have very little limp left. Life is good! I'm told it won't feel completely normal for some months to come, but I'm cool with that as long as progress continues.

Ugh... Motorhead is a far better story.

Dare I say, I do indeed feel your pain.

It was the STIMULUS of the money the US spent on that war that brought us out of The Great Depression... killing people didn't do it, but when you say WWII did it, that's what it sounds like.

Why can't we just spend money on good things for we the people? Take the amount that was spent on WWII and bring it up to what it would cost today, then spend that money on things we need... like roads and bridges and schools... you know, the stuff we need?

Because we are only motivated to spend that kind of money on death! Why can't we be motivated to spend it on LIFE??

It was shrouded in skin color for years as we were "taught" to hate brown people and we "learned" to look down our noses... but it was always about being poor. You see, as the 2% slowly absorb more and more of the available wealth, they need us to marginalize a much larger group of people. So now we must "learn" to hate anyone who is poor... without realizing we are all poor.

Two percent of the population have 98% of the available wealth, which generates 30% of the nation's tax revenue. That leaves 98% of us to squabble over 2% of the wealth as we come up with 70% of the tax revenue.

We are like a 100 pound puppies fighting over 2 pieces of kibble.

I don't post at DU, or anywhere, on weekends. At 6pm on Friday, the computer is turned off and it doesn't come on again until Monday morning. I still have my BlackBerry if the boss needs me, but I am DU free on the weekends. I find I really do need the time away.

I think I abhor that kind of behavior because I know I can be capable of it myself, and it is no less ugly and nasty when I do it... so I've made a real effort to mull things over before writing and be a kinder, gentler JuniperLea I think it's working because I felt sort of icky saying that to the poster... but I felt worse about LauraPMAD getting beat up for asking a question.

Something about anonymity, I think, brings out the worst in some of us. Worse still is when people bring this attitude back out into real life. When I felt like asking someone for a link, out loud, face to face, is when I realized I needed to make a clear distinction between the InterTubes and my life. Not my 'real' life... my life!

In short (yeah, right) I am trying to be the change I want to see in DU.

Rather Randian as well. I've got mine, fuck you. Everyone should make it on their own without any help from anyone else, as long as I can help myself to as much of the pie as I choose. And don't expect MY kids to avail themselves to this lofty ideal of self support... I'm going to give them shiny cars, college degrees, homes and credit cards... whereas your kids need to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and make something of themselves despite how difficult I make it for them! Harrumph!

But that said, I know, without question, that we have been quite fortunate that we didn't slip into a full blown depression with 30% unemployment and more people scrambling for the soup lines.

I'm stuck in a deteriorating neighborhood in a house that's worth half of the mortgage principle. I can't sell, can't short sell, can't refi. A good 25% of the neighborhood is bank owned; many empty homes are now crack houses and gangster hangouts. I hear helicopters more nights than not, and gunshots wake me from sleep at least six times a month. I have a son who got laid off from Dow and can't find work. I have a daughter who is working in a book store for minimum wage because that's all that's available, and a boyfriend who has been out of work for over a year. Both of my sisters have lost homes to foreclosure. My brother's construction business has slowed drastically. I'm trying to help way too many people. In short: I'm fucked. But I'm a realist. I know things are a little better than before, and I know what we've avoided.

But let's all go ahead and bash the only person on Earth who is trying to help. Let's kick him in the ass for not being the Magic Negro we elected!! Yeah, that makes a lot of fucking sense.

Atheists, and they jumped ship as soon as "The Moral Majority" and all the religoids started showing up. The evangelicals are, from my perspective, evil! EVIL! I'm a recovering Fundy... I went to church with my aunt after Bush pulled his "Shock and Awe" dog and pony show... and it was all I could do to remain in my seat. The preacher extolled the virtues of W, told the congregation to pray for him and keep him safe from all the "radical liberals" who were fighting against this "nobel" war... I really, really wanted to leave... I stayed out of respect, and fear for my aunt. She's had an earful from me ever since... I was raised in the same church as her daughters, my cousins, one of whom is a Christian Missionary in Israel (I kid you not). We learned from the same Bible... seems I'm the one who remembered. These beasts are false prophets... now I'm not saying I believe what's in the Bible, but I do believe that as human beings we sometimes self-fulfill prophecy.

Religion is a very, very powerful tool. The image of burning in hell for eternity is a hard one to shake. The dogma that bastardizes most religions is alive and well in Christianity... oh GAWD... you got me started!

Every time I take one of those political compass tests, I nearly fall off the edge.

But then I'm actually smart enough to know that the rest of the world doesn't see from my perspective, from my personal window/picture frame on the world. I am smart enough to know that I have to work within the framework that is presented, while also attempting to stretch the view of others who do not share my perspective, and to do all this without being a belligerent asshat. Being a belligerent asshat is counter-productive; it can work to turn people even further from the ideals you are trying to push. But here is a really important part of this equation: I'm smart enough to know that a decade of fertilizer is going to take a while to clear out... and the stench will take even longer.

Oh, and I don't tap my foot whilst awaiting the nukerator to warm my lunch... that's always a clear sign of a belligerent asshat.

We could afford health care for all, and eliminate our debt in short order. But no... the guide to class warfare says to continue blaming the poor brown people for everything. That keeps the poor white people whipped to an evil froth, and that keeps the poor brown people whipped to a froth. In short, what you get is class warfare disguised as race warfare. All this hate keeps the eyes on each other, over a minuscule slice of the pie, when the real robber of tax dollars is evil war that sucks nearly two thirds of our taxes and puts it into the pockets of the 2% that control all of the money.

The rest of the discussion is just fertilizer.

And see the hundreds of mothers, fathers, little kids... from my POV, as someone who works in a metropolitan downtown setting adjacent to a "robust" skid row area, those who are drunk or on drugs first and foremost have untreated mental issues. Thank you King Ronnie Fucking Raygun. We have far too many Vets on the street too... with a vacant look in their eyes.

There is one woman, clearly suffering mental illness, who sleeps outside the Greyhound bus depot every day... as if she is waiting for someone that never comes. I've seen her almost every day for five years now. I affectionately call her (to myself) "Leather Foot" because her always-bare feet look like worn leather boots instead of feet. Only her toes give away the truth. There are kind people here, so she gets blankets and food on a regular basis... but she relieves herself in a storm drain and you can tell by the look on her face this is a complete embarrassment to her.

People just don't know. They really don't.

Then I go on to the 39th floor of a glass and steel tower and live a corporate life of lattes and fresh salads... it's really disturbing.

You'd let him rest in peace.

The poor soul is on the other side now, and he doesn't deserve this constant upheaval, constant stirring of the shit that surrounded his last years and his death.

Please, for the love of Michael, let him rest in peace!!!!!

The perception of life and its issues means nothing to those out of the physical. It's petty.

Please stop being petty and let Michael rest in peace. The longer the shit keeps stirred, the longer he will go without his rightful rest.

You are never going to convince people of anything other than that which they already hold as truth.

Please, please, please, let Michael rest in peace.

And condemning one thing she said, just like everyone else. I don't give a flying rat's ass if she was talking about Jews, Israelis, Catholics, Brazilians, Buddhists, or Inuits for fuck's sake. You are bound and determined to put words into people's mouths, play the fucking martyr, and complain about shit that you are making up. You don't get to make shit up then condemn people for your fantasy.

... we were on the slippery slope to The Great Depression V2.0. Seems something happened to change that... or slow it down.

We were in the Titanic, going over Niagara Falls... and somehow, we didn't hit bottom... and the bow has turned to point up. We don't have much momentum, yet, but at least we didn't shatter on the rocks below!

What I'm seeing now is DUers who got married (voted for Obama) thinking they were going to change him, and didn't pay attention to what he was telling them during the courtship.

He told us it was going to take a couple of years to see the kind of change he was after. I'm seeing people in my neighborhood going to work on infrastructure projects, I'm seeing people being hired to temp jobs after being out of work for a long time (some companies seem to fear the commitment of regular employees in this financial climate, but at least there's some work for a few people), and I'm seeing a lot more work that needs to be done. There are no quick fixes to any of this. Obama said this. I heard him. I believed him. It seems as true today as it did then.

I was late to the Obama train, so perhaps I was paying closer attention than those who were swept up in the magic... see my sigline.