Cognitive dissonance...

The mainstream press, maintaining the storyline, regardless of the facts...

The Atlantic, 7/27/2012:

Syria's admission Monday that it has chemical weapons has revived a controversial theory about one of the biggest intelligence failures in American history: The non-existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The theory holds that Saddam Hussein did in fact have huge stockpiles of chemical weapons all along, but they were never uncovered by U.S. forces because he secretly smuggled them out to Syria days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. If true, it's the type of revelation that would recaste the Iraq War in the history books...

Associated Press, 7/31/2012:

Britain will help the Iraqi government dispose of what's left of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons, still stored in two bunkers in north of Baghdad, the British embassy in Baghdad announced Monday...Saddam stored the chemical weapons near population centers so that he could access them quickly, despite the danger to his civilian population.

Obama partisans ignore facts when bashing Bush

I've written about some of this before...

Byron York:

Revenues fell in Bush's first two years because of a combination of the tech bust and the start of the tax cuts. But then things took off. After taking in $1.782 trillion in tax revenues in 2003, the government collected $1.88 trillion in 2004; $2.153 trillion in 2005; $2.406 trillion in 2006; and $2.567 trillion in 2007, according to figures compiled by the Office of Management and Budget. That's a 44 percent increase from 2003 to 2007. (Revenues slid downward a bit in 2008, and a lot in 2009, when the financial crisis sent the economy into a tailspin.) "Everybody talks about how much the Bush tax cuts 'cost,'" says one GOP strategist. "We're saying, no, they led to a huge increase in revenue."

...

None of this is to say that George W. Bush had a good record on spending. He didn't, and he's fair game for criticism. But is it honest to condemn reckless spending in "eight years of Republican rule" when Democrats controlled the Senate for four of those years and the House for two? Is it honest to talk about the "cost" of the Bush tax cuts when federal revenues increased significantly while they were in effect? And is it honest to refer to Bush's ballooning deficits when deficits actually trended down for much of his presidency -- at least before Democrats won control of Congress?

There are a couple of very important points in there. The issue of the "cost" of the tax cuts cannot be overstated. Everyone on the left that wants to point the finger of blame at Bush always starts with the "the Bush tax cuts cost $x billion dollars, and that's the source of the deficit" argument. Blaming the Bush tax cuts for the deficit assumes that, were they not in place, everyone would have made the same amount of money, the economy would have grown at the same rate, and that tax revenues would, therefore, have been higher by an exactly predictable amount. I don't buy any of those assumptions. It's a fundamentally dishonest way to start the discussion.

The other key part of the debate that gets ignored by the finger-pointers on the left is that deficits did shrink through the middle of Bush's Presidency. The current deficit explosion dates to the election of a Democrat-controlled Congress in 2006. Again, none of this exonerates Bush or the Republican Congress, because they were not good stewards. But the Democrats have been much, much worse...

Laffer vs. Zakariah: Who’s Right?

Roger Kimball:

When the subject turns to taxes and politicians and pundits start talking about “fairness” you can be sure that is foreplay for policies that penalize success. The punitive aspect is essential. Which is why pointing out that raising taxes on productive citizens will decrease revenues and threaten to prolong the recession cuts no ice with egalitarians. For them, the really attractive thing about raising taxes is not that it helps the poor (which it doesn’t) but that it hurts society’s producers, a.k.a. “the rich” (most of whom of course, are not rich, i.e., not in a position to spend $2 million on their daughter’s wedding: no, you have to labor long and hard as a public servant in the Democratic party to afford that sort of extravagance).

The truly amazing thing is that someone wants to argue that the Bush tax cuts, enacted in 2001, are the cause of the deficit. From 2002-2008, federal tax revenues rose at an annualized rate of ~5.2%.

That's right. The federal government, after the passage of those draconian Bush tax cuts, source, according to some, of all evil, saw its revenues rise at over 5.2% per year. So, if the federal revenues were rising that way (which is very close to US GDP over that same period, which rose about ~5.3% per year) how did the deficit get out of control? Spending! Federal spending, over that same period, rose by approximately 6.6% per year. There are two sides to the deficit equation, inflow and outlay. If inflows are increasing at 5% annualized rate, you've got to be pretty profligate to run a massive deficit.¹

And we'll leave the last word to Wilkins Micawber, who understood this.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

¹ - We saw this exact same dynamic play out with the Reagan tax cuts of the 80s. Democrats wailed about starving children, federal revenues rose significantly with the economic expansion, spending rose faster, and the tax cuts were blamed for the deficits...

Will Bush be another Truman?

Mark McKinnon:

Truman holds the dubious distinction of achieving the lowest in-office job approval of 22 percent, edging out Nixon at 24 percent and Bush at 25 percent.

And yet, time and history have been kind to Truman. In the 2009 C-Span Historians Presidential Leadership Survey, the top four slots go to, no surprise: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt. And No. 5? Truman. Today George W. Bush sits at 36, while his father comes in at 18.

Will time be as kind to Bush? There are some early indicators that his resurrection may well be under way...

It's a fairly short but interesting read. For the record (again), I've been saying for years that I think history will look on George W. Bush much more favorably than the media did during his Presidency. On the big issues of taxes, judges, and the war of civilization vs. Islamism, he was basically right. Lord knows that he did plenty of things that I disapproved, and still disapprove, of, but he was a good man and he was right on most of the big picture stuff.

Blair keeping the faith

I'm not a particular fan of Tony Blair, another modern, "3rd-way" pseudo-socialist politician, but on this, I agree with him completely.

Former prime minister Tony Blair said Friday he had no regrets about removing Saddam Hussein after delivering a robust defence of the 2003 invasion of Iraq at a public inquiry into the war.

Rounding off his day-long evidence session, Blair said he accepted "responsibility but not a regret for removing Saddam," insisting the Iraqi leader was a "monster" who had "threatened not just the region but the world."

The thing is, for all of the "Bush lied, people died" nonsense that's followed, there was no serious doubt anywhere in early 2003 that Saddam Hussein had WMD programs. Bush knew, the British knew it, the French and Russians knew it - everyone knew it. We still don't know to what extent the weapons were moved or hidden or non-existent, but there wasn't anyone making a compelling case that they didn't exist before the war.

And, on a related topic, where are all of the "Bush is going to war for his oil buddies" people now? How'd that work out for you?