As part of a cutover to a new host and a new design — Though scheduled posts will go up between now and late Monday morning, I will be creating no new content and will not process any comments until Monday at about noon evening — perhaps as late as Tuesday morning.

At the end of a report about how the estimated deficit for the current fiscal year that will end September 30 has again been revised downward, this time to $260 billion, Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press writes:

The Bush White House has gained a reputation for overstating deficit figures early in the year in order to report better news later. In February, the White House predicted a $423 billion deficit for the current year.

What Taylor fails to note is that the people who have made such a claim are predominantly partisan Democrats (example: July 11, 2006 at DNC blog) and partisan columnists (examples: Brad DeLong [July 2006], BuzzFlash [Feb. 2004]).

As to the substance of the claim –

• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) uses “static analysis,” naively assuming that tax cuts will result in no new revenues from additional economic activity, and conversely assuming that tax increases will achieve every dollar of projected revenue increases, when it calculates its deficit estimates. This puts the White House in a position of either doing their own estimates using static analysis, a path of least resistance, or doing “dynamic” estimates that attempt to predict revenue growth resulting from tax cuts.
• Rather than engage in a day-by-day knock-down, drag-out battle with CBO about economic assumptions, the White House has chosen to do its own estimates using static analysis, in effect saying, “OK, we’ll give in on static analysis now so we can crow when the dynamic economy does its thing and causes revenue increases.” That is turning out to be a sound political strategy.

Hey, it’s not The White Houses’ fault that the static analysis crowd continues to be wrong. But it IS Andrew Taylor’s fault that he either doesn’t, or won’t, recognize the origins of the announced improvements, or the partisan nature of the whining about them.

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UPDATE: Porkopolis provides two timely and unfortunate reminders. The first, as has been the case for at least 40 years, is that the reported annual budget deficit is much less than the annual increase in the national debt, as USA Today noted on Friday (previous BizzyBlog posts on that are here and here). The second is, as I noted last year, that the federal government has failed the audit of its books for the past nine consecutive years.

Free Links:

• “Facing the Giants” Update — This is the film that was given a PG rating for being “too evangelistic.” Though I don’t see any evidence in the WorldNetDaily article that this particular film’s rating will change, it’s quite clear that The Motion Picture Association of America has backed down in how it will handle Christian themes in future films:
  

  The PG decision prompted 15,000 e-mails of protest, and now things have changed.

  “The chairman of the MPAA’s ratings board, Joan Graves, announced the association would no longer consider statements of faith or religious content as ‘thematic element’ that could trigger a rating of PG or higher,” Baehr confirmed.

  Ted Baehr has a good “big-picture” (haha) look at how financial reality is finally moving Hollywood to produce a heavier mix of more family-friendly fare. While I agree that this is a welcome development, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that in a lot of the “good” films, the producers manage to get in some off-color and off-message digs designed to be in-your-face slaps at traditional values and norms.

• Somebody get the R-Rated WhistleBlower a calculator — His Sunday issue leads off as follows:
  

  According to the History Channel, only two really important things ever happened on today’s date: 61 years ago the Enola Gay dropped the big one on Hiroshima and during the early 60s, Mrs. Braun gave birth to her “Mr. Don’t Know It All” son Joe, who’ll be celebrating at a surprise birthday party today ….. Our good friend Joe will be 33 today.

  If “good friend Joe” was 33 on Sunday and was born in the early 1960s, he’s found the Fountain of Youth.

• Normally a Wizbanger, Jay Tea does a great riff on apologies at Willisms, and notes how the recent attempt at doing so by Firedoglake blogster Jane Hamsher totally fails the four tests of sincerity. It’s amazing how it takes only six words (”I was wrong. I am sorry.) to get really close to meeting all four.

• I applaud ex-CNN anchor Daryn Kagan’s planned launch (HT MediaBistro Newser) of an inspirational stories web site, darynkagan.com, in mid-November, and wish it great success.

• Someone at the Ohio DMV has wayyyyy too much time on their hands –
  

  Pat Niple turned 74 years old on Tuesday. She normally ordered her license plates and renewal stickers by mail. But this year, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles returned her check, accompanied by a letter.

  “The letter stated that I could no longer have my license plate, which was NWTF,” she said.

  Niple’s personalized plates are NWTF, an abbreviation of Northwood Tree Farm — a business she owned with her late husband. It also means something else, officials said.

  ….. Niple said she plans to appeal and that she will at least keep the plates and frame them in memory of the business her family once owned.

  If you don’t know what the “something else” is, go to the link. Next thing you know, Ms. Niple will get raided for having obscene materials if she does save the old plate.

A Canadian woman found out who prevented her from drowning, and surprised him:

Surrey woman meets her rescuer

Monday, July 31, 2006
LOWER MAINLAND - At a lacrosse game in Coquitlam on Sunday afternoon, a Surrey woman surprised the modest man who saved her life.

Sharon McAuliffe, 53, said she would have drowned in the Vedder River in Chilliwack on July 22 had a stranger not jumped in to save her.

After the rescue, the man disappeared without a trace. McAuliffe did not even know his name, but desperately wanted to thank him.

She contacted Global News, which broadcast the story on Friday night. An anonymous person called Global and said McAuliffe’s hero was the assistant coach of a lacrosse team playing at the Coquitlam Sports Centre on Sunday afternoon.

Global contacted the team’s coach and arranged for McAuliffe to be at the game. When the team came into the rink, the coach told McAuliffe’s story over the loudspeaker and called Ryan Boivin, 22, down to meet McAuliffe.

“I had no idea this was going to happen,” said Boivin. “I was surprised to see cameras at the game.”

The crowd and Boivin’s team cheered as he and McAuliffe embraced.

McAuliffe couldn’t thank Boivin enough for saving her life. “He’s just amazing,” she said. “He could have drowned coming to save me. He’s my hero.”

Boivin was modest. “I hope anybody else would do the same thing,” he said. “I’m just glad I was there at that time.”

….. Boivin was at the riverside with his girlfriend when he heard McAuliffe calling for help. “I took off my sunglasses and jumped in to help her,” he said. “What would anybody else do?”

Boivin swam upstream to reach McAuliffe. “The current was pretty strong,” he said. “I went under a couple of times.”

McAuliffe said that when Boivin reached her, she lay back and he pulled her to shore.

“He didn’t have shoes on — I don’t know how he made it through that current,” said McAuliffe.

That was where Boivin’s experience came into play. “When we’re fishing we have to cross the river all the time,” he said. “You get used to looking down to see where it gets deep. You have to keep your knees bent and your feet up. It hurt a bit getting back to shore but it was nothing I can’t handle.”

Boivin brought McAuliffe to shore and helped her expel the water in her lungs. “Then I got her back to her husband and her family,” he said. “I thought she was in good hands, so I left.”

McAuliffe was pleased at the outcome of her search for her rescuer. “It was amazing,” she said. “I don’t know how you thank the person who saved your life, but I’m so glad I met him.”