Studies that focus on the effect of tax cuts on the economy point toward job creation, higher wages, and an increase in revenue. The fact that the economy is experiencing a downturn cannot be linked to the Bush Tax Cuts. The slide is due to other problems. I'm pulling from multiple sources so I'll help you out by quoting those studies HERE, so you don't have to read all day (just half a day).

What does the following article tell you (cited by Lori Robertson, author of the Fact Check article you linked to)?

"History demonstrates that lower tax rates are good for the economy. The tax rate reductions in the 1920s, 1960s, and 1980s all resulted in faster growth, rising incomes, and more job creation. Moreover, even though critics complained that these tax rate reductions would allow the "rich" to keep too much of their money, upper-income taxpayers actually wound up paying a greater share of the tax burden during all three decades, because lower rates reduced the incentive to hide, shelter, and underreport income."
Heritage.org

Obama knows that he shouldn't be raising taxes.

"Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush's tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy."
The Huffington Post

Lowering taxes for the big earners means freeing up more capital in the private sector. THAT'S A GOOD THING! Raising taxes obviously has the opposite effect.

"The higher the bracket, the greater the penalty. By the time taxpayers reach the 39.6 percent bracket, they are able to keep only about 60 cents of any added income--and this is counting only the federal individual income tax. This high tax "price" of government has adverse effects on work effort, but most of the economic damage occurs because punitive tax rates discourage saving and investment. Indeed, because upper-bracket taxpayers earn most of their income by supplying capital to the market, and because capital is extremely sensitive to changes in tax rates, this is one of the most important reasons to reduce the top tax rate.

More specifically, high tax rates encourage upper-income taxpayers to alter the location, timing, and composition of their portfolios to protect their income. This misallocation of savings and investment reduces the economy's growth rate and deprives workers of the capital they need to be more productive; and this lower productivity means, of course, that workers will earn less income."

-Daniel J. Mitchell, Ph.D.
Heritage.org

Just read the Joint Economic Committee's studies on Tax Rates VS. Tax Revenues:

"The 1993 Clinton tax increase appears to having the opposite effect on the willingness of wealthy taxpayers to expose income to taxation. According to IRS data, the income generated by the top one percent of income earners actually declined in 1993. This decline is especially significant since the retroactivity of the Clinton tax increase in that year limited the ability of taxpayers to deploy tax avoidance strategies, temporarily resulting in an increase in their tax burden."
House Joint Economic Committee Report April 1996

In response to the Rolling Stone article you presented:

"Referring to the chart on page 5 of the census report, we see that the top of the lowest fifth bracket went from $13,471 in 1967 to $16,116 in 1998, a growth of 19.6% in real terms. During the same time, the top fifth of wage earners went from a minimum of $53,170 in 1967 to $75,000 in 1998, a growth of 41.1%. Similar increases can be observed in each of the income brackets.

Everyone got richer, but the rich got richer faster.

This is hardly surprising. Someone that is rich is going to have more extra money that they can invest which, in turn, creates more money. Money generates money and no-one disputes that being rich is, by definition, a financial advantage in a capitalistic society. Short of draconian wealth redistribution, this will always be the case. However, the macro-economic data from 1967 to 1998 does not support the assertion that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The data supports the position that everyone got richer. While there may be year to year variations in a negative direction, the long-term trend is that all Americans are getting richer."
Letxa.com

From the same article:

"Saying that "a tax cut favors the rich" is either based on ignorance (given that you can only give a tax cut to someone that pays taxes, and that the "rich" are really the only ones that pay taxes in any substantial manner) or is disingenous (because the person knows this to be true, but makes the accusation anyway). The statement "a tax cut favors the rich" should be reworded "a tax cut favors those that pay taxes." It would be just as accurate but obviously without the class warfare undertones. Unfortunately, those that state "tax cuts favor the rich" are usually hoping for those class warefare undertones, so hoping for them to use the more accurate and less divisive words is probably utopian."
Letxa.com

...but what do Barack Obama, The Heritage Foundation, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Joint Economic Committee know?

>> ^Fjnbk:
The Japanese atrocities during World War II have been far too underreported for years.

Every country's atrocities during all wars have been underreported. Those that win the war get to write its history.

*documentaries. The Japanese atrocities during World War II have been far too underreported for years.

I'm grateful to raven for raising the issue of the sanctions regime:

Cool war:
Economic sanctions as a weapon of mass destruction

Joy Gordon


* * *

In searching for evidence of the potential danger posed by Iraq, the Bush Administration need have looked no further than the well-kept record of U.S. manipulation of the sanctions program since 1991. If any international act in the last decade is sure to generate enduring bitterness toward the United States, it is the epidemic suffering needlessly visited on Iraqis via U.S. fiat inside the United Nations Security Council. Within that body, the United States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfying its most basic humanitarian needs, using sanctions as nothing less than a deadly weapon, and, despite recent reforms, continuing to do so. Invoking security concerns—including those not corroborated by U.N. weapons inspectors—U.S. policymakers have effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized act of mass slaughter.

Since the U.N. adopted economic sanctions in 1945, in its charter, as a means of maintaining global order, it has used them fourteen times (twelve times since 1990). But only those sanctions imposed on Iraq have been comprehensive, meaning that virtually every aspect of the country's imports and exports is controlled, which is particularly damaging to a country recovering from war. Since the program began, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died as a result of the sanctions—almost three times as many as the number of Japanese killed during the U.S. atomic bomb attacks.

News of such Iraqi fatalities has been well documented (by the United Nations, among others), though underreported by the media. What has remained invisible, however, is any documentation of how and by whom such a death toll has been justified for so long. How was the danger of goods entering Iraq assessed, and how was it weighed, if at all, against the mounting collateral damage? As an academic who studies the ethics of international relations, I was curious. It was easy to discover that for the last ten years a vast number of lengthy holds had been placed on billions of dollars' worth of what seemed unobjectionable—and very much needed—imports to Iraq. But I soon learned that all U.N. records that could answer my questions were kept from public scrutiny.

Read the entire article here: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2002/11/0079384

qm, lying to the country is illegal even if your strange assessment of the "success" of the invasion is correct.

The only mistake in taking out saddam was we didn't level iran first.

as for giving iran the "smackdown"... well, you can't fucking afford it.

A few dozen Raptors over Tehran and the shadow of one B-2 is all it would take, just like Israel kicked Syria's ass from the air(also underreported).

Oh and while you're at it could you please illustrate some of this "alternate history of the past eight years" you refer to?

1) Claims that Bush "stole" the election when in fact it was the taxocrats who tried to steal it
2) Bush "knew" about 9-11...or planned it (not worthy of any response deeper than "Koo-koo!")
3) After 12 years of sanctions and an entire world intelligence community agreeing saddam had wmds (which he did, since he used them) claiming that poor saddam was "illegally attacked".
4) Slick Willie "did everything in his power" to answer muslim terrorist attacks in the 90s.
5) Islam is a 'religion of peace' the government is picking on.
6) Non-stop doomsaying over how Iraqi thugs were going to defeat the world's finest armed forces.
7) Deliberate (what-liberal-media?) blackout of any positive news from Iraq
Sandbagging Gen. Petraeus.
9) Hillary supports the war unless the crowd she's bowing to opposes it.
10) Terrorists at Gitmo are being "held without trial" (even tho US law doesn't apply to them).
11) The Patriot act has led to rampant eavesdropping on regular joes and internment camps, etc.

Liberal alternate history: a negative, half-baked fairy tale focused only on greed, exploitation and cynicism, sold to neo-hippies by paleo-hippies, both who've never been hungry for more than a day and therefore have no understanding of what privation really is, resulting in no gratitude, no shame, no nothin' except hatred for Bush.

Peter Paul is a bitter ex- mega fundraiser who filed civil suit. The VRWC nutjobs have tons on this:
HREF=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_F._Paul

Clinton and her supporters have maintained that she had no direct knowledge that the event violated campaign finance rules. In a written declaration for the California court filed on April 7, 2006, she said only that she didn't remember discussions with Paul about the fundraiser.

"I have no recollection whatsoever of discussing any arrangement with him whereby he would support my campaign for the United States Senate in exchange for anything from me or then-President Clinton," Clinton said in the declaration.

"I do not believe I would make such a statement because I believe I would remember such a discussion if it had occurred," she added.

The Federal Elections Commission already ruled early last year that Clinton's 2000 campaign committee had underreported cash it received at the fundraising event Paul sponsored. The FEC slapped the campaign committee with a $35,000 fine.

For analysis of the US/UK-dominated sanctions regime I strongly recommend a thorough look at Joy Gordon's "Cool War": http://www.harpers.org/archive/2002/11/0079384

from Cool War, Harper's Issue Nov. 2002: "In searching for evidence of the potential danger posed by Iraq, the Bush Administration need have looked no further than the well-kept record of U.S. manipulation of the sanctions program since 1991. If any international act in the last decade is sure to generate enduring bitterness toward the United States, it is the epidemic suffering needlessly visited on Iraqis via U.S. fiat inside the United Nations Security Council. Within that body, the United States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfying its most basic humanitarian needs, using sanctions as nothing less than a deadly weapon, and, despite recent reforms, continuing to do so. Invoking security concerns—including those not corroborated by U.N. weapons inspectors—U.S. policymakers have effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized act of mass slaughter.

Since the U.N. adopted economic sanctions in 1945, in its charter, as a means of maintaining global order, it has used them fourteen times (twelve times since 1990). But only those sanctions imposed on Iraq have been comprehensive, meaning that virtually every aspect of the country's imports and exports is controlled, which is particularly damaging to a country recovering from war. Since the program began, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died as a result of the sanctions—almost three times as many as the number of Japanese killed during the U.S. atomic bomb attacks.

News of such Iraqi fatalities has been well documented (by the United Nations, among others), though underreported by the media. What has remained invisible, however, is any documentation of how and by whom such a death toll has been justified for so long. How was the danger of goods entering Iraq assessed, and how was it weighed, if at all, against the mounting collateral damage? As an academic who studies the ethics of international relations, I was curious."

I don't see why this is so shocking, most of it's been sheite and suni factions killing eachother.

Its shiite and Sunni. Anyway, its not a question of whether its shocking, the media is not there for shocking people.(oh, wait..) Its a question of importance. These numbers refer to "Excess" deaths, in other words deaths that most likely wouldnt have occured if it wasnt for the invasion.

The Sunni and Shiite clashes have happened, as far as I can recall, mostly in 2006(or maybe that was just earlier underreported as well, who knows), and these numbers came out a while ago. Anyway, the clashes started because there is very little control in Iraq, the country is in chaos, and extremists on both sides took advantage of the situation.

Saddam was a bad guy, no doubt, but atleast he had some control there, and without the invasion, they probably wouldnt have clashed.