One of the first things that comes out of the mouths of the peanut gallery in their laundry list of reasons to support Kerry and/or bash Bush is the "D" word... the [pause for dramatic music] deficit. "We had a wonderful surplus, and Bush squandered it! Kerry! Only Kerry can save the government! He'll protect us from the giant fiscal hole the Bushies have dug!" Right? Wrong:

A Washington Post review of Kerry's tax cuts and spending plans, in addition to interviews with campaign staff members and analyses by conservative and liberal experts, suggests that they could worsen the federal budget deficit by nearly as much as President Bush's agenda. If projected savings from unspecified cuts do not materialize, Kerry's pledges could outstrip those of the president, whom the Democrat has repeatedly accused of unprecedented fiscal recklessness. [emphasis added]

Which means, in essence, the next time one of you in the Yellow-Dog peanut gallery brings up the deficit as a reason for supporting Kerry or bashing Bush you're gonna owe me a pizza. Capice?

Further on in the article the reporter of course lets pass without question this great technocratic bon-mot:

"We're faced with a choice between a president who ... has no plan to deal with deficits except economic growth, versus an opponent who says he wants to do something about the deficit but whose numbers may not add up," [Leon E. Panetta, Bill Clinton's first budget director] said.

That's right folks, it wasn't a booming economy that made the surpluses possible, it was the Right and Proper guidance of our technocratic overlords. Likewise, it wasn't a sagging economy that allowed the deficit to balloon like a porn star's boobs, it was the incorrect management of a different (and therefore wrong) set of technocratic overlords that made it possible.

It seems so obvious to me now... we are not a quarter-billion bloody-minded individuals busily creating wealth for ourselves and our country via free markets, we are but a poor and helpless harvest, whose only hope is the care of our technocratic reaper men.

Worse still is the lack of the diagram that accompanied the article in print; a diagram that made it clear that the real difference between Bush's gigantic deficit and Kerry's gigantic deficit is that almost all of Bush's comes from tax cuts, while Kerry's comes from new gargantuan wealth-redistribution schemes (aka "government programs"). To simplify it for the gallery... Bush's deficit comes from him allowing me to keep my money, and Kerry's comes from him taking it.

See friend, the tricky thing about stereotypes is they're usually based on real differences, and rhetoric is sometimes a way of stating those differences clearly. Combine them and if you're not careful you might actually, occasionally, stumble across the truth.