Your regular helping of Joelitude.

It's almost painful to disembowel Joel Johannesen's latest helping of sheer, stenographic, right-wing idiocy since, of the entire Canadian wankersphere, Joel is probably the least educatable of the lot. His tenacious refusal to learn anything whatsoever is purely awe-inspiring. and it shows in his latest moronic screed (you may have to scroll down to find this piece):

Thanks to tax cuts, U.S. deficit falls to $205B; tax revenues up

Quick, liberal media: get a story about “man-made global warming” and Iraq war dead or ... Hillary!

Deficit Falls to $205 Billion

Jul 11 08:52 AM US/Eastern

WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation’s budget deficit will drop to $205 billion in the fiscal year that ends in September, less than half of what it was at its peak in 2004, according to new White House estimates.

President Bush planned to discuss the figures in an afternoon appearance.

The new figure is considerably smaller than original estimates. In February, the White House predicted that this year’s deficit would be $244 billion because of stronger-than-expected revenue collections. The deficit hit a peak of $413 billion in 2004 and was $248 billion last year.

Three years ago President Bush had promised to cut it in half by 2009, and that goal has now already been beat.

Whoo hoo! I mean, it's freakin' party time! After all, how can you not celebrate the accomplishments of someone who, when he entered office, inherited a massive surplus, then managed to fuck up the economy so badly that reducing the deficit to a mere $205 billion is now cause for celebration? That's pretty much the definition of "the soft bigotry of low expectations," isn't it? But wait ... it gets better.

See, it's now 2007, but even back in 2005, anyone with a functioning brain stem could see what was happening (all depressing emphasis added):

Poor to pay price of US deficit
Bush proposes to halve overspend by 2008 with reductions in welfare and education

Sweeping cuts in welfare, education and housing programmes for the poor were the centrepiece of austerity budget proposals announced by George Bush yesterday to meet his campaign pledge of halving the US budget deficit in his second term.

You know, I'll bet even I could deal with the deficit if I just started slashing social programs all over the place. That doesn't require a great deal of careful analysis, does it? But wait -- there's more.

Critics said that Mr Bush had used an inflated initial estimate of the deficit in 2004 to make the reduction by 2008 look bigger. They added that the deficit projections excluded the $80bn cost of military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, the transitional costs of privatising America's pension system, and of making the tax cuts in Mr Bush's first term permanent.

Uh ... yeah, that's kind of important -- the fact that you can selectively leave out whopping big expenditures to make that bottom line look good. But, hey, don't mention any of this to Joel -- you wouldn't want to intrude on his reality.

P.S. And at no extra charge, even some of Joel's Blogging Tory colleagues realize that he's an asshole. Man, with friends like that ...