Liberalism: Life Devoid of Reality

It's gotta be fun being a liberal. Personally, I wouldn't know, because every time I try to understand what it's like to think like a liberal I pass out, but it's gotta be nice to be able to live in constant denial of reality.

Here's what I'm referring to:

President Bush today delivered a presentation to Congress detailing the success of his administration's economic policies. In a unilateral pre-emptive strike, the New York Times today published an editorial trashing the Bush economy. The thing about the Times editorial, though, is that it is nothing more than anti-Bush propaganda.

All good propaganda must include within it a shred of truth, or, at the least, a half-truth, and the Times does this with great skill. Looking at the numbers reported in the Times, the Bush economy doesn't look very impressive, and does, in fact, look somewhat depressing. The lie in the numbers the Times uses, however, is that the numbers they report only work if you assume that President Bush's economic policy took effect the minute Bush was sworn in. The denial of reality here is that, as all good liberals do, the Times refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Bush administration inherited a recession. When President Bush took office, the previously robust economy (whose success was thanks to the Republican-dominated Congress) was beginning a downward turn, which soon became a recession (the 9/11 attacks helped greatly in this). The truth is, while the economy was headed downward during the early part of Bush's presidency, President Bush's economic policy didn't take effect until President Bush was finally able to overcome Democratic obstructionism and the 'Bush tax cuts' were passed - about 18 months into President Bush's first term. And if you calculate the numbers from the time that the President's economic policy took effect, it's extremely easy to see that President Bush's plans for the economy have been hugely successful.

The Times, however prefers to live in their own little dream world, denying any and all signs of economic success. Meanwhile, the real world suffers under the burden of continuing left-wing propaganda.

One of the most amazing things about the success of the Bush economy is that, contrary to the nay saying of liberals, government revenues have skyrocketted. That's right, President Bush lowered taxes, and revenues went up. When President Bush proposed the tax cuts, the Democrats ran around screaming about how the deficit was going to skyrocket...and with the war, it has. But, provided the Congress can restrain its penchant for funding 'bridges to nowhere', the increased revenue will allow the government to pay down the deficit.

Sometimes, however, the denial of reality is much more veiled than this blatant attempt by the Times. It seems that every month I hear the same reporter for AP radio news saying that "economic growth was not as high as experts predicted," basically framing economic growth as a bad thing because the economy didn't grow as fast as some 'experts' said it should. After hearing this for a few months, a couple of questions popped into my mind: first, just how much did the economy grow, and second, what is it about the economy that makes these experts so optimistic? After all, if experts are predicting such robust growth month after month, then either the Bush administration is doing a good job, or the 'experts' are inflating their numbers to make it look like the administration is doing poorly (because the numbers show that the economy is booming, and nowadays, liberal nay saying just shows that Dems will even deny the undeniable if it means they can attack President Bush).

The unemployment rate is at 4.6 percent. To put this in perspective, the lowest unemployment rate during the Clinton administration (which President Clinton was lauded for by the media) was 4.2 percent (through much of Clinton's presidency it was much higher)...just 0.4 percent lower than where the unemployment rate is now. Under the Bush tax cuts, tax revenue grew by $274 billion, or 14.5 percent. As President Bush stated in his address, "It's the largest increase in 24 years" (or since 1982, when President Reagan, who also lowered taxes, was in office). The Treasury Department projections say that next year, tax revenues will increase by $246 billion, or 11 percent. The original projection for this year's budget deficit was $423 billion. The actual deficit: $296 billion. Hardly the worst economy since Herbert Hoover, as the Democrats alleged before the 2004 election. The economy is booming, and as the President said, "That's what happens when you implement pro-growth economic policies."

Liberal attacks on the Bush economy are old news...and by now, they truly are just tired attempts at lying to the public. The economy has been doing great for so long that maybe the Times should change its motto from "all the news that's fit to print" to "all the DNC propaganda that we can possibly run".