{"id":2181,"date":"2009-01-11T18:39:09","date_gmt":"2009-01-11T18:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2181"},"modified":"2009-01-11T18:39:09","modified_gmt":"2009-01-11T18:39:09","slug":"postmortem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2181","title":{"rendered":"Postmortem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Salon has a sobering itemized list of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/feature\/2009\/01\/08\/damage\/print.html\">wreckage left in the wake of the Bush administration<\/a>. A few of the most egregious examples: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font size=\"3\" face=\"times new roman, times, serif\">\n<p><strong>Number of manufacturing jobs lost since 2000:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/ftpdocs\/97xx\/doc9749\/12-23-Manufacturing.pdf\">3.78 million<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font><font size=\"3\" face=\"times new roman, times, serif\"><strong>Increase in number of unemployed workers from 2001 to 2008:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/empsit.nr0.htm\">4 million<\/a>, a <a href=\"ftp:\/\/ftp.bls.gov\/pub\/special.requests\/lf\/aat1.txt\">jump of 2.7 percent<\/a> in the unemployment rate<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font><font size=\"3\" face=\"times new roman, times, serif\"><strong>Cost to conduct the Iraq war per month:<\/strong> $12 billion<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font><font size=\"3\" face=\"times new roman, times, serif\"><strong>Amount the Bush administration estimated the war would cost from start to finish:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?f=\/c\/a\/2008\/03\/17\/MNBVVL9GK.DTL\">$60 billion<\/a><\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font><font size=\"3\" face=\"times new roman, times, serif\"><strong>Increase in the amount that the average employee pays toward employer-provided healthcare since 2000:<\/strong> 120 percent<\/font><\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And over at the New York Times, both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/01\/11\/opinion\/11rich.html?ref=todayspaper\">Frank Rich<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/01\/11\/opinion\/11lithwick.html?ref=todayspaper\">Dahlia Lithwick<\/a> deliver a couple great op-ed pieces urging the country not to simply turn the page on the Bush years and move on. I have to admit that I haven&#8217;t had much patience for those who advocated trying administration officials on war crimes. After reading these articles, I&#8217;m a little less certain of my position. We Americans like to think of ourselves as eternal optimists who can shrug off our past failures; we aren&#8217;t inclined to sit around and deconstruct our fuck-ups. And in some ways, that&#8217;s probably a pretty healthy component for a national psyche to possess. But the last eight years have been bad; probably worse than we realize in our current shellshocked state. This administration has buried a lot of secrets that need to have a light shined on them, even as we look forward to a new political era. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Salon has a sobering itemized list of the wreckage left in the wake of the Bush administration. A few of the most egregious examples: Number of manufacturing jobs lost since 2000: 3.78 million Increase in number of unemployed workers from 2001 to 2008: 4 million, a jump of 2.7 percent in the unemployment rate Cost <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2181' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-zb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}