Small Government Myths

I could never figure out where Bush's credentials as being a small government guy came from, other than his penchant for cutting taxes, thus shrinking federal revenue while he was busy increasing federal expenses.

How exactly did George W. Bush shrink the size, power, and cost of the federal government during his eight years in office?

Was the government budget higher or lower in 2008 than in 2000? How about the deficit? Did the bureaucracy shrink? Did the amount of money pouring into government from lobbyists get larger or smaller? Did the federal government have more power over its citizens in 2008 or 2000? Was the national military bigger or smaller? Was the Constitution in safer hands? Was the government more likely to pry into your private affairs or less likely? More likely to tell your local independent school district how to run things or less likely?

Bush just accelerated the focus of big government from protecting the rights and well-being of citizens to protecting the rights and profits of corporations.

Making Shit Up: The Conservative Case for Torture

Interesting article in the New Yorker dissecting the half-truths and outright lies that make up former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen's "Courting Disaster," a defense of the Bush administration's pro-torture interrogation agenda.

I seen this sort of thing all the time coming out of the Bush camp: the references to secret documents that support one side, testimony of experts who are not in fact experts on the subjects they are commenting on, the attempts to ignore any policy criticisms that emerged from within the administration to preserve the illusion of a united front, and the blatant rewriting of facts. It's straight big tobacco lobby tactics across the board.

It emerges in claims like these:

• Obama dismantled the pro-torture Bush stance (when Bush himself did it in 2006 in response to criticism),
  
• Bush could never have known anything about the dangers of al Qaeda (yet somehow Clinton still could have)
  
• Bush didn't change the justification for the war with Iraq after the fact
  
• Obama and his democratic cronies are trying to create a police state (ironically, using the very laws that Bush and the Republicans pushed through as necessary for national security and promised would never be abused . . . until they didn't have the gun in their hands anymore, of course)

It's fortunate that we live in a country where the message is controlled by the liberal media, so we never have to worry about this sort of thing getting widespread distribution to people who never, ever look anything up. . . oh wait, that's a load of bullshit.

Unintentional Comedy from Wall Street Jounal

Stumbled across a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled, "The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace." Apparently Bush tried his hardest to build bipartisan bridges and protect our freedoms and received nothing but scorn. Wow. And here I thought Bush was an intellectually lazy, partisan, power hungry, vindictive, morally hypocritical sack of crap who demanded loyalty over competence and was totally in the tank for the business partners of his friends and family.

The author, one Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, spends a lot of time commenting on how Bush was damned if he did, damned if he didn't in his decisions, insofar as he couldn't make either party happy. In doing so, the editorial conveniently overlooks the reasons why Bush failed to satisfy either party--he repeatedly made incompetent, hasty, poorly planned, and generally half-assed manuevers.

In such a circumstance, it is the JOB of the representatives of either party to criticize the poor decisions and lousy performance of the commander-in-chief. Perhaps the author thinks the grotesque attempts to expand executive power that have taken place in the Bush administration should include freedom from accountability or criticism. We first tried that with John Adams and the Anti-Sedition laws. It doesn't hold water now.

Shapiro identifies himself as having been part of the 2004 John Kerry campaign. Apparently this is supposed to make it seem as though he is a Democrat who sees the true greatness and nobility of the Republican Bush. On the one hand, claiming a role in Kerry's campaign does not fill me with respect for anyone's political insights. On the other hand, if you go to his website, you'll see that Shapiro appears rather conservative for a mainstream Democrat, so much so that he seems to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. Plus he's most famous for being obsessed with the JonBenet Ramsey case and being accused of crossing ethical lines during his journalistic investigation. He also wrote a book on the Kobe Bryant trial.

Anyway, the followup comments on the editorial are filled with people either expressing their disbelief or people talking about how fantastic Bush was and how things are going to suck as soon as he's gone. Ah, people, things suck NOW.

People unwilling to acknowledge Bush's incompetence, arrogance, and all around jackassery (go read this book of administrative quotes on the leadup to the war in Iraq) continue to amaze me as much as people who insist that Reagan was a brilliant President who defeated communism, shrank government, and boosted the economy. (All of which involved increasing the size of government, running up huge deficits, and pushing through federal spending at more than 4.5% of national GDP no less than four times, according to the current Office of Management and Budget.)