Where were the "Take Back America" people during Bush's presidency?

Several things. 1. Early in Bush's first term there were a whole bunch of scandals on Wall Street.

Big brokerage houses were found to be abusing their customers' trust, selling them stocks the brokerage knew were junk, then betting against them. There were stock price manipulation scandals, insider trading scandals, etc. etc. People looked to The President to remedy this situation but the Republicans don't believe in regulation, they believe stock brokerages should be able to regulate themselves. So the problems got worse and worse.

Bush defunded the SEC (the Securities Exchange Commission, set up by FDR after the last great stock market crash) so they weren't really able to do their job. 2. Regulations were also relaxed on banks.

Bush and the Republicans repealed the Glass Stegal act, another law passed in the wake of the last crash to separate investment and deposit banking, which allowed big banks to basically gamble with their depositors' money. Banks were allowed to package mortgages together and sell them to investors, then they'd get their money back and lend it out again, so they could use the same money over and over. This basically made deposit banks into investment brokers.

And since banks weren't lending THEIR OWN money, they lowered their standards for who they would lend to. This worked great as long as real estate values were climbing rapidly, but as soon as the went down, even the tiniest bit, the whole system collapsed, and property values crashed around the country. 3.

Bush came to office with the budget nearly balanced. That first year, if he'd done nothing, if he'd just sat on his hands, he would have had a balanced budget, and he could have taken credit for it. Instead he simply could not wait to undo all the good work Clinton had done, he gave away the prospective surplus in a big tax cut for the rich.

Bush ended up doubling the whole pre-existing national debt, and that's NOT COUNTING the two wars, which he financed on the credit card. I think those 54% of people finally realized that every Republican president since Reagan has promised to make the budget his top priority but once in office decided debt simply didn't matter. 4.

Despite what you hear from Rush Limbaugh, our economy has improved steadily under Obama. In fact for the last century or so the Democrats have done much better on economy issues than the Republicans. 5.

The simple matter of taking responsibility. McCain and Romney were not even able to distance themselves from Bush's policies, to admit even that he'd made 'honest mistakes' and tell us what they would do differently. In fact the both of them seemed to advocate a return to Bush's policies, to Reaganomics, even though it's been a total disaster for 95% of us for 30 years.

As for Bush himself, he never actually said "Whoops, we did something wrong. Mistake were made. We should do this other thing now."

He acted as if nothing bad happened! I think this is the main reason people blame him.

Not one single presidential VETO for the six years of totalitarian GOPism...and the Congressional Republicans SPENT! Like a bunch of drunken sailors. In addition, the corporate-colluding GOP under the leadership of the lawless Bush/Cheney administration green-lighted the always-fail policies of supply-side (upside-down-pyramid) economics, deregulation, and unfunded mandates (not-paid-for revenue-destroying tax cuts for the wealthiest 1.5%, Medicare Part D, the poorly conceived "No Child Left Behind"), plus the two wars (also NOT PAID FOR) that were deliberately kept OFF THE BOOKS to make the U.S. economy appear far better than was the case.

The ILLEGAL invasion of Iraq in 2003, a nation that never once attacked the U.S. and that was not in any way involved in the 9/11 attacks, drove oil prices (deregulated by the GOP Market manipulations) sky high, driving American families ever deeper into debt until the housing and credit markets began their 2005 IMPLOSION that precipitated the horrific world-depression-causing FINANCIAL SYSTEM MELTDOWN (due to the GOP's deregulation that took away all oversight, all consumer protections, and all systems of checks and balances that could have prevented the DEPRESSION-like Great Recession). The use of illegal TORTURE by the Bush/Cheney lawless nation-destroying regime alienated our traditional allies (trading partners usually), as did the illegality of the invasion of a sleeping Iraq, so trade fell off. The Ayn-Rand-like focus by the GOP on "profit margins" and their insider trading conflicts of interest encouraged and even subsidized companies that moved their operations overseas to third-world nations---had to have those "expanded profit margins" to feed their need for GREED... The Bush/Cheney administration COOKED THE BUDGET BOOKS and kept costs of both wars (more than $5 TRILLION) off the books, plus they did not add in the costs of the unfunded mandates cited above.

The first nine months of 2009 were the Bush/Cheney final $1.9 TRILLION fiscal year budget that did not expire until September 30, 2009, so a lot of uninformed rightwingers (Republicans) keep trying to blame President Obama for what GW and his handler Cheney did. President Obama's very first budget began October 1, 2009 and was for a whopping $.9 TRILLION LESS than his predecessor's final budget. In addition, President Obama CUT SPENDING in more ways than one, with two of these spending cuts involving the cancelation of the GW Bush-ordered presidential helicopter fleet in February 2009 ($62 BILLION returned to Treasury for deficit paydown) and the other being President Obama's cancellation of the Cheney-ordered 138 F-22 planes at a ridiculous $365 MILLION PER PLANE, again returning this already Bush-appropriated billions to Treasury.

The GLOBAL problems were all on the GOP due to bankster and Wall Street DEREGULATION, so don't try to go heaping blame on the nation-saving President Obama and his valuable team.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.