since november 2006, when democrats took control of both houses of congress, the following has happened

• gas prices have increased from $2.18 a gallon to more than $4 . . . . approximately doubling (pelosi said she had "a plan" to reduce the cost of gas)
• the US unemployment rate rose from 4.5% to 5.5%, with millions of americans losing their jobs
• 1,280 american troops have been killed in vietnam (er, iraq, sorry), despite a pledge to bring the troops home
• home prices have crashed, and hundreds of thousands of homeowners are facing foreclosure and bankruptcy
• General Motors stock is at a 50 year low and our banks are being bought by arab "sovereign wealth funds"

congress would have you believe that failing to find and drill for new oil has no relation to oil price; that unemployment is a consequence of the rising oil prices which they shirk responsibility for; that its bush's fault they didn't simply vote to bring the troops home; that crashing home prices have nothing to do with the media driven frenzy that made everybody believe that they could "flip that house" in 6 months for a $100,000 profit; and that higher taxes will restore stock market values.

if you believe any of that, i have a bridge i'd like to sell you.

vote for obama if you dare.

full disclosure - mccain apparently isn't any better; we're screwed

What do you have to say for yourself? Mine, too, but I'm not casting any stones.

It's not a Democratic congress; it's a blue dog Democrat and Republican congress. Would it have made any difference if it had been a Democratic congress? We'll never know.

The above is why Bush has a 28% job approval rating. The failure to stop him or otherwise meaningfully address themselves to any of these problems is why Congress has an 18% job approval rating

The 10% edge for Bush is presumably due to the fact that his policies are intended to please at least some small percentage of the population; Congress is pleasing nobody.

Obama might very well be cunning and charismatic enough to do something useful about our national plight. I think "McCain 2000" would have stood a chance as well. But we don't have McCain 2000. We have McCain 2008, who does much, much less to inspire my confidence.

Then this stuff about the Unitary Excecutive Theory:

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No way around it, if you think the country is in a shithole, its because Bush/Cheney dragged us in.

What, is he on a sabbatical leave and you are contractually obligated to step in? Lord, woman, where is the poetry, where is the spittle? The bridge thing is sooooo cliché and that full disclosure tag is weak, too.

Jeers, no cheers from ducadmo, eh?

But full disclosure, I'm not very cheery today anyway.

Yes, as long as it works against the Democrats.

Jack

PumpkinSeed wrote the following post at 06/26/2008 4:37 PM: No way around it, if you think the country is in a shithole, its because Bush/Cheney dragged us in.

Horseshit....the Democrat controlled congress is at fault. This is the price we pay for electing Democrats to high political office.

Jack

The voters always blame the executive branch, not Congress, and your data, as always, are very selective. The bulk of move in energy prices occurred from 2002-6 (from about $17/barrel to $85/barrel at the 2006 high). That's was a quintupling of the oil price. The oil price a year ago was lower than it was during 2006 at the high, and in fact the big recent move in oil occurred as Ben Bernanke was slashing interest rates and bailing out the likes of Bear Stearns and Countrywide. All of this is intimately tied in with the decline in the dollar--most of which occurred as the Republicans controlled Congress, and Bush's lack of an energy policy.

As for home prices, their decline can be safely laid at the feet of the banking administrators who allowed the whole bubble to happen, as well as Greenspan's 1% rates during 2003-4, which got the housing mania roaring. The subsequent decline is simply a reaction to the mania which preceded it--as you have pointed out. Blame Bush and the people he appointed. Blame the GOP Congress while you're at it. The current congress is in the awkward position of having to prop up the policy failures which occurred during 2002-4.

bush's rating has slipped to 23%, but congress's has slipped to 12%.

i would never be one to sell short the power of charisma. ronald reagan had it, and so does obama.

but reagan had actually governed america's largest and most fractious state, and rather successfully too.

obama has held no executive level positions in any city, state, or corporate level. he isn't even half way into his first term as senator.

the notion that he can command the attention of senators and congressmen with vastly greater experience and wisdom, and compel them to his bidding (whatever it turns out ot be) is dubious.

i hold bush accountable for iraq and various other foreign policy disasters, and i hold pelosi and congress accountable for their inaction since the mid terms

in contrast, you refuse to hold your own party accountable for anything, and will forgive everything, even campaigning on getting us out of iraq and then reversing course in the "first 100 hours" of the new congress, as pelosi put it . ..

wonderful - partisanship like this is why the country is in the shithole. voters who have a double standard, and never hold their own party accountable for its lies and mistakes.

actually, not.

recent polls put bush's approval rating at 23%, and congress at 12%.

in other words, they think congress is twice as screwed up as bush. no congress (and no president) have ever been rated lower, apparently.

if voters actually held the president responsible for everything, then they wouldn't have installed the democrats as a majority in congress. they did so, however - and now clearly regret it.

Congress as a whole always gets low approval ratings. A better measurement would be the aggregate approval rating of individual congress members as rated by their districts. Everyone always hates congress as a whole, but rate their own representative much higher.

Also... I'm not sure where you're getting 12%.

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Help me out here, B-A. You said: if voters actually held the president responsible for everything, then they wouldn't have installed the democrats as a majority in congress. they did so, however - and now clearly regret it.

I don't get your first sentence. Voters did hold Bush responsible for (most) everything, and punished him by voting in the Democratic congress in 2006.

Your second sentence doesn't follow, and is not supported by polls I've seen. In fact, most voters are planning on voting for Democratic congresspersons in 2008.

Some people--I'm one--are less than happy with the performance of the Pelosi congress thus far. But this is not to say we preferred the DeLay-Hastert congress.