Numbers Aren't My Strength ...

I managed to avoid college math by taking a course in logic. Like Maureen Dowd says of Condoleezza Rice, numbers aren't my strength. Dowd concludes:

It is puzzling that if you add X (no exit strategy) to Y (Why are we there?) you get W²: George Bush's second inauguration.
At Condi's hearing, she justified the Bush administration's misadventures by saying history would prove it right."I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment, but in how it all adds up," she told a skeptical Senator Biden.
Problem is, she's calculating, but she can't add. For now, Sam Cooke is right about the Bushies. They don't know much about history.

I do better with history. But even I understand that these numbers, cited by Numeralist, are troubling:

By the Numbers: The U.S. After 4 Years of Bush

Poverty Rate
2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans
2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million Americans

Stock market
Dow Jones Industrial Average
1/19/01: 10,587.59
1/19/05: 10,539.97

NASDAQ
1/19/01: 2,770.38
1/19/05: 2,073.59

S&P 500
1/19/01: 1,342.54
1/19/05: 1,184.63

Value of the Dollar
1/19/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros
1/19/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 Euros

Budget
2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion
2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion
That's a shift of $649 billion and doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war.

Cost of the war in Iraq
$150.8 billion

American Casualties in Iraq
Deaths: 1,369
Wounded: 10,252

The Debt
End of 2000: $5.7 trillion
Today: $7.6 trillion
That's a 4 year increase of 33%.

Thanks to Eric Alterman at Altercation for the tip.

On some other numbers, Oliver Willis suggests that you watch this clip of Vanity Fair's Judy Bachrach trying to tell FOX News's Bridgitte Quinn how an appropriate Inaugural celebration in wartime might look.