This will not be a meaty post. It will be short and sweet. I personally don’t think it requires a lot of explanation because it should be self-evident.
At the end of a year media bombards us with “let’s look back” type of stuff. You know, the “year in review” and all that jazz. At the end of a decade we get that times ten.
Out of all that blitz something caught my eye. I’m going to call it The Bush Effect.
As we all know, George. W. Bush was President of the United States for eight whopping years out of the last decade that some are calling The Oughts. Fitting. So I submit that when Americans are asked their opinions regarding The Oughts what they are mostly doing is passing judgment on the Bush years.
We’ve all heard the news stories about “historians” (whoever the hell they are) arguing over how history will view the Bush years. They usually make the point that although it seems grim now, history make be more kind, and that we’ll just have to wait and see. I submit that we’ve already got our answer.
So what does the data show? A new poll from the Pew Research Center, under the headline “Current Decade Rates as Worst in 50 Years,” provides some answers. When asked about The Oughts, 50 percent of Americans responded that they had a “negative” impression. 27 percent were “positive” and 21 percent said “neither” and two percent said they “didn’t know.”
Wow. That seems to be quite damning. Let’s try to put that in historical perspective by comparing the “positive” results from the last five decades:
“Positive” responses by decade:
1960s: 34%
1970s: 40%
1980s: 56%
1990s: 57%
2000s: 27%
Wow. Was Bush a wrecking ball or what? That is quite the reversal of a trend.
Meanwhile, after one year with Barack Obama at the helm, the results regarding the future are markedly different. 59 percent said the next decade will be better. 32 percent said the 2010s would be “worse,” with 4 percent responding about the “same” and two percent saying they “don’t know.”
That’s my take on providing some context to one slice of how American’s feel as we leave one decade behind and embark on another.
Shouts from the Abyss 
Dems declare war on Rasmussen?
posted at 12:00 pm on January 3, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
There is a saying in litigation that one argues the facts when the facts are on one’s side, the law when the facts don’t, and attack the character of witnesses when neither the law nor the facts support one’s case. Apparently, the same holds true in politics. Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reports that Democrats finding themselves hammered in the polls have decided to blame not their radical agenda or the failure of their economic polices, but the pollster for reporting the findings:
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/03/dems-declare-war-on-rasmussen/
Yes, al-Thuggy is so happy with his poll numbers he is attacking the pollsters. Just wait til he really drives the economy off the cliff.
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I agree man, it was a dark decade. Had a lot of promise, then auuugh.
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auggh must be when al-Thuggy was elected.
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Obamateurism of the Day
posted at 8:05 am on January 4, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
Barack Obama managed to come home from Copenhagen empty-handed twice in his first year of on-the-job executive training, and that’s bad enough for one’s credibility. However, the Washington Times reports that the second trip was even more embarrassing, as Obama had to walk into a meeting uninvited in order to get other world leaders to spend any time at all with him:
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/04/obamateurism-of-the-day-181/
The al-Thuggy effect. LMAO
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This blog is not a news aggregator service. Please keep comments on point and do not add comments that consist entirely of news items. Thanks.
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Was to the point. Shows how pathetic al-Thuggy is and what a crappy new decade he will bring. You think people will still be optimistic when foreign leaders treat him like the dirtbag that he is? And we get to look forward to lots of inflation due to all the money al-Thuggy printed. Yipee!!! What a “great” “president” isnt he? Sorry you didnt like the al-Thuggy effect but get used to it. 🙂
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Again:
I say, “Roses are red.”
You say, “Violets are blue.”
Both are statements that can have a true/false state. However, the second statement has absolutely nothing to do with the first.
If you do not think my interpretation of the Pew polling data is correct, that it represents some sort of Bush Effect on the last decade, tell me why. Make your case.
I say, “Polling data shows a Bush Effect.”
You say, “There is an Obama Effect.”
Aside from being non-responsive (as usual) I guess the logical deduction is that you are in agreement with my original statement. I guess we agree more often than I realized. 🙂
Does a poll that shows 50% of Americans feel the 2010s will be better than the 2000s mean that the decade actually will be better? No it doesn’t. My point is that the response is indicative of the Bush Effect.
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You see I am not a drone, Bush was disappointing, especially in his 2nd term which did result in some of the “Bush effect’. That is the difference between the drones and the conservatives. We realize that Washington has sold out America, Democrats and Republicans alike. The drones are like lemmings and will follow their demomarxist leaders off the cliff. Must be why the tea party right now is more popular than the GOP and the demomarxists. We think for ourselves and hold our leaders responsible. You should be thanking us conservatives for the “Bush effect”. For if we were drones, he would have been up their with Clinton and Reagan.
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Congrats. You seemed to get my “roses and violets” example of logic. There might be some hope for you. 🙂
I appreciate your effort to respond on point. I agree with you that “drones” are never a good thing. I disagree, however, that drones are limited to one side or the other. “We do this and they do that” is a very dangerous mindset, in my humble opinion, especially if it isn’t true.
I agreed with some decisions and actions by Bush and disagreed with others. Sometimes I agree with Obama and sometimes I don’t. In general, though, I tend to agree a bit more with Obama than I did with Bush. If you think that makes me a mindless drone then you don’t really know me.
Can you produce any kind of data or study that backs up your belief that liberals are more “drones” than conservatives? Or is that based only on your gut?
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“Can you produce any kind of data or study that backs up your belief that liberals are more “drones” than conservatives? Or is that based only on your gut?”
Like tax cheats and crooks in the demomarxist party that keep getting reelected? Like how Ted Kennedy was a lifer despite letting a woman die. Conservatives tend not to reward corruption like the libs do. The fact that al-Thuggy gets passes for what Bush did and then some. Or that Hawaii wants to make al-Thuggy’s birthday a state holiday. For what? He hasnt served one friggin year and he is rewarded with a holiday? I have never seen anyone come close to being rewarded for nothing like he has. In all honesty, its disturbing.
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Not enough has been said about the damage that was done by the baby boomers in the 1990s, which I think has nothing to do with whoever was in the White House. It’s a huge consumeristic group hell-bent on grandiosity in houses, experiences, vacations and cars beyond anything their parents’ generation ever dreamed of, much of it was fueled by debt. This party ended in the oughts, because the boomers were so debt-ridden they had to pull back. Also, in the oughts they were beginning to get “religion” — that is the simpler life, looking toward their retirement years and downscaling to smaller homes and feeling their mortality (even as they worked out to stay young forever). A lot of the boom times during the Clinton years can be attributed to the boomers dumping their money into stocks, inflating them. That wasn’t a sustainable model. The irony is that this is the group that was all about making a difference, saving the planet and not being about money. I bought into that and built a very energy-efficient home with a lot of green features, which no one was the least bit interested in when we were trying to sell it.
I’m one of these boomers and have followed the fortunes of this huge group. I remember in the mid-90s my husband and I were building a house. As we were building, I read an article about how difficult the real estate market was going to be in the mid 2000s as the boomers scaled back and there was no one to buy their “dream” homes becasue the group behind them was smaller and not so grandiose. So after a few years, we put our house on the market. It took a little over two years to sell. And this was before the real estate crash, partly fueled by boomers scaling back, in addition to all of the other factors contributing to the bust.
I personally don’t see this decade (actually starting in 2011) as being a good one. In fact, I’ve never been more pessimistic in my life.
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