Leftists have been warning us for decades of dire consequences for us to come if we don't vote for them and instead opt for free markets. I have written about the early years of this phenomenon and the very latest ones. The middle period is worth a look, too, if for nothing other than that it often describes how the left behaves once it has power. Here are a few problems:

2001: We again had a cowboy, incompetent idiot in the White House, and on 9-11-01, we were attacked by radical Islamic terrorists.

In the 1990s, when we were being led by a brilliant Democrat, Bill Clinton turned down opportunities to get Osama bin Laden and, along with his deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, decided that it would be a great idea for the intelligence and justice departments not to share information. We also didn't screen Saudi pilots very well.

So George Bush was blamed for the attack. Dire warnings when they mattered in this case were ignored, except when it became convenient to blame Bush.

Isn't it interesting that when we are attacked by Islamic extremists, we are correctly lectured that not all Muslims are extremists? When an illegal alien kills or commits other violent crimes, we are correctly told that not all illegal aliens are dangerous. But when someone kills people with a gun, we need more gun control on all gun-owners. Democrats have a curious sense of what dire warnings are.

2005: Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans hard in late August, after days of warning of how dangerous it was. New Orleans had a Democrat mayor, and Louisiana had a Democrat governor who didn't get the people evacuated and didn't put any food or water in the Superdome, but Bush was blamed for the deaths. The storm hit on Monday, and on Tuesday morning, it was apparent how bad it was. By Friday, around 72 hours later, the Bush administration, in coordination with the military and FEMA, had efficiently and effectively evacuated the town. Yet to this day we are told how incompetent Bush was. We were also told he was a racist who did not care about the poor. The strategy by most of the media and other Democrats is always the same. The truth doesn't matter. Only power.

After Katrina hit, we were told that hurricanes would be more frequent and severe than ever. We were also told that Bush's pro-oil policies caused Katrina. That was all made up. After Katrina, the U.S. had a mild ten-year period on hurricanes.

Whenever we have droughts, floods, storms, wildfires, or heat waves, we are told the lie that they are the worst they have ever been. The media just repeat the lies. When we have cold snaps or record snows, we are told that doesn't indicate anything about global warming — more pure BS pushing the Democrat agenda for more government control.

2008: ABC ran a report saying significant parts of Miami and NYC would be underwater by 2015, due to global warming, and the price of milk and gas would skyrocket, among other dire predictions. The predictions were pulled out of thin air, but they served their purpose to scare the public into supporting more government control.

Gas prices skyrocketed in the summer of 2008, which contributed greatly to the deep recession and, for the umpteenth time, the lie that we were running out of oil. Sarah Palin correctly we should drill, drill, drill our way to energy independence, and she was called stupid by Obama and others.

In August 2008, Nancy Pelosi said on Meet the Press that we must get away from fossil fuels to natural gas. She is called smart. But here's the problem: "Nancy Pelosi Still Doesn't Know Where Natural Gas Comes From."

For years, beginning most prominently in the 1980s, we had been seeing interest-only loans, no-document loans, negative amortizing loans, over 100% loan-to-value mortgage loans. We had seen massive fraud at Fannie and Freddie.

Yet somehow, Wall Street firms packaging loans; ratings agencies; and regulators at the SEC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, OCC, and OFHEO and regulators throughout the states didn't spot the dangers to the safety and soundness of the economic system or didn't care.

These incompetent bureaucrats not only weren't fired or punished. They were given more power. The Democrats' solution to government incompetence is always to give more power to the government. This time, they decided to create another government fiefdom. This time it was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB, and this fiefdom is answerable to nobody. Its budget comes from the Federal Reserve instead of Congress, and the Federal Reserve isn't audited. What could go wrong? Maybe an out-of-control bureaucracy shaking down financial institutions and setting up a slush fund, used for political purposes?

2009: The recession was almost over but there was a supposed dire need for a stimulus bill, ostensibly to be used for shovel-ready jobs but in the end, often was shoveled to political bundlers for Obama.

Obama rewards big bundlers with jobs, commissions, stimulus money, government contracts, and more

In 2009, we were told how serious the health care crisis was and since the government had done so well with the VA and the Indian health system, we were told that we needed more dictatorial government policies to take away our freedom of choice. In order to get the bill passed we were continually lied to, with the support of the incurious media, that people would keep their policy and their doctor, that premiums and total costs would go down substantially and that it would reduce the deficit.

The situation was so dire that Nancy Pelosi told her minions that they had to pass it to see what was in it.

The results of Obamacare are in. Premiums and out of pocket costs skyrocketed, government costs on Obamacare skyrocketed and the government liability on student loans skyrocketed. People lost their freedom of choice. Life expectancy also unexpectedly dropped for four straight years. That is what you get when the compassionate party authorizes the government to pay bonuses to hospitals for not readmitting sick patients.

In 2020, the media is supporting the people who lied to us on Obamacare, in their quest for more government control of our health care. The public is being again misled that the government is better at controlling costs than the people and the private sector. When will the media do their job instead?

Image credit: YouTube screen shot.