[Jim in CT]

On MSNBC tonight, both Chris Matthews and President Obama stated that Obama "inherited" the economic mess from the Republicans. Of course, since this was MSNBC, that statement goes completely unchallenged.

Can one of the liberals here explain how the Democrats inherited this mess from Republicans? Here are some irrefutable facts...

The United States is a democracy, not a dictatorship. The legislative branch has more influence on the legislative agenda than the executive branch.

Since January 2006, the Democrats have controlled the legislative branch. When they took over the legislature from the GOP in January 2006 , the Dow was at 12,600, and unemployment was at 4.6%.

The president (Obama), vice president (Biden) and Secstate (Clinton) were all prominent, influential senators in the majority party. As such, it seems to me that they have a great deal of ownership of economic performance since their party took control.

The financial de-regulation that allowed things like derivitives, credit default swaps, and collaterized debt obligations, was passed by a republican legislature in the late 1990's, and signed into law by President Clinton.

Before the economy collapsed, the GOP introduced a bill that would have prevented Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from writing so many subprime mortgages. That bill was fillibustered by 2 senators named Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, 2 senators who got more campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie than anyone else.

The GOP, when they controlled the legislature for the 1st 6 years of the Bush presidency, allowed Bush to rack up a ton of debt. My point is, the GOP is not without fault here.

OK, what am I missing? How were the Democrats innocent bystanders to all this?

Look at liberal policies of taxing, spending, borrowing, and saying "yes" to every demand ever made by a labor union. What has that gotten us?

I don't get it, I just don't get where guys like Spence are coming from...