perfidy

Much has been made in the right wing press of a "liberal" focus on "Bush's lies". What, exactly, are we supposed to do when we have a clear-cut case of it right in the middle of extremely serious public debate?

Tony Pugh of Knight Ridder writes about the senior's drug benefit cost analysis process. The short version is that the real number, $550 Billion, was available from the Office of the Actuary well before the debate. The administration knew about this number, but squelched its release by threatening to fire the analyst who came up with the figure.

$400 Billion was bandied about extensively as the "cost" of the program. To their great dishonor, GOP and Dems voted for this boondoggle intergeneration wealth transfer, a giveaway to the drug industry. And I almost forgot; while they were voting an open-ended benefit to seniors, they also chopped off the government's hands by writing into law that they government may not negotiate on price with drug companies. Every other nation in the world that has a public drug plan negotiates, except this one.

But back to our saga...the country was shocked (to the extent that is possible any more) to learn, only two months after the drug benefit was signed into law, that its costs were off by nearly 50%. "How did this happen?", we all asked ourselves...and now we know.

I call it a lie when you deliberately falsify budget numbers to deceive congress, in order to get your way in the political process.

This is, of course, simply the tip of the iceberg. Knight-Ridder obtained copies of emails that prove that this incident occurred.

We've had years of bullshit job estimates from the Bush crowd. Do we have any reason to believe that these estimates originated anywhere else other than Karl Rove's head?

Calpundit points us to a parallel-universe press conference transcript with House Speaker Dennis Hastert (have you ever noticed that "Hastert" sounds a lot like "Hastur," as if an Ancient Evil were now empowered to speak on behalf of the duly elected representatives of the citizens of the USA? I wonder if you go insane if you look into his eyes long enough... that sure would explain a lot...)*

The trouble is, this parallel-universe conference was only parallel if you reduce our n-dimensional space to n=1: that is to say, it actually happened. In this universe.

Hastur^&^&^&...Hastert, sorry, was a little steamed over trouble with the President's people and a transportation bill. Read on!

Q You met with the administration yesterday. Did they say they would support the target number?

Speaker Hastert. We need to go forward, we need to go to conference with the Senate, and then if they want to be involved in that conference, they certainly will be able to be involved in it.

Q But did they say they would sign?

Speaker Hastert. They didn't make a commitment.

Q Did they say they would veto it?

Speaker Hastert. They didn't say they would veto it.

Q Is that with the President or with the people?

Speaker Hastert. That is with the President. I don't deal with his people anymore.

[snip]

Q Sir, what did you mean by that last comment: That was with the President; I don't deal with his people anymore?

Speaker Hastert. Well, we weren't getting straight numbers from his people, and they changed their mind in the middle of the process. So we are going to do what we feel we need to do.

Q Just on this issue or on

Speaker Hastert. On this issue.

Q Or in general?

Speaker Hastert. On this issue.

Q Sir --

Q What kind of numbers were you getting from them?

Speaker Hastert. Different numbers.

Q Different from?

Speaker Hastert. Where they added up.

Well, all-righty-ho, then. I'll just leave this up with no comment.

[wik]* Vote Yog-Soth-Oth in 2004! Why settle for lesser evil?

One of my bosses is a native of Spain, and his sister, a nurse, spent yesterday treating victims of the Madrid terrorist attack. Everyone he knows is okay, thank God, but for thousands more that is not true. Spain has now faced its turning point, its "M-11" as they're calling it. If the perpetrators are possibly Basque seperatists, the tactics reek of Islamofascist groups, and it wouldn't surprise me if they had worked together. After all, if the strongly Catholic IRA could train with al Qaeda, why not the Basques, who, Christians though they may be, are also an irritant to the perfidious Spanish "occupiers" of the ostensibly Muslim Iberian Peninsula?

After 2001, I accepted the fact that life was never going to be as easy as it had been before. The confident assumption of insularity-- even of invulnerability on our own soil-- that Americans had taken almost for granted, was shattered. Another random attack of similar kind has since then been a constant possibility. Now, after Madrid, I'm starting to deal with the fact that another attack is a constant probability.

Sometimes it amazes me that humanity has survived this long with such obvious flaws as rampant stupidity and gullibility. What amazes me more is that the stupid and gullible-- such as terrorist fanatics-- are also the most dangerous ones among us.

[wik] Glenn Reynolds suggests sending flowers to the nearest Spanish Consulate General. A fine idea.

[alsø wik] There's some very good analysis of the Madrid bombings from people who actually live in Spain over at Iberian Notes, starting with this post.

My thoughts are with the citizens of Madrid today. Whether it was the homegrown nutjobs of the Basque separatist movement, or the usual Islamofascist nutjobs, a terrible atrocity has been carried out at the expense of hardworking regular Spanish citizens. Like the Onion said two years ago, "we must respond with measured, focused rage."

No... not that kind!

The Transterrestrial Musings kind! They're a group blog dedicated mainly to space stuff. Go look!

Well, isn't this just the shit?

Victorinox, they of the massively accessorized cutlery, have teamed with Swiss tech company to offer a version of the Swiss Army knife featuring a USB flash memory stick, in 64MB or 128MB flavors.

In ten years I'm going to read this post and fall into peals of laughter over the tininess of 128 megabytes, much as I now scoff at the 1GB hard drive that was the SHIT back in 1995 but now isn't even big enough to run a Microsoft OS. But for the time being, look on in wonder at the utter sweetness of it all.

Belle and John have a fascinating brace of posts (part one, part two) on the huge, yawning chasm that stands between libertarian theory and practice.
Belle goes on the attack first, writing on the pony thesis of libertarian dreaming:

Now, everyone close your eyes and try to imagine a private, profit-making rights-enforcement organization which does not resemble the mafia, a street gang, those pesky fire-fighters/arsonists/looters who used to provide such "services" in old New York and Tokyo, medieval tax-farmers, or a Lendu militia. (In general, if thoughts of the Eastern Congo intrude, I suggest waving them away with the invisible hand and repeating "that's anarcho-capitalism" several times.) Nothing's happening but a buzzing noise, right?

Now try it the wishful thinking way. Just wish that we might all live in a state of perfect liberty, free of taxation and intrusive government, and that we should all be wealthier as well as freer. Now wish that people should, despite that lack of any restraint on their actions such as might be formed by policemen, functioning law courts, the SEC, and so on, not spend all their time screwing each other in predictable ways ranging from ordinary rape, through the selling of fraudulent stocks in non-existent ventures, up to the wholesale dumping of mercury in the public water supplies. (I mean, the general stock of water from which people privately draw.) Awesome huh? But it gets better. Now wish that everyone had a pony. Don't thank me, Thank John.

John writes in the second part on the problems that occur when you can't, say, fire the police, much less summon them:

Finally, I know that libertarians are sick of hearing about the Wild West (or the eastern Congo), but if you propose a model of rights enforcement whose nearest analogue seems to be the Clint Eastwood movie "A Fistful of Dollars", then you just have to suck it up. It can hardly be irrelevant or illegitimate to point out that in our world, which my people call "Earth", there already exist places where people must band together for self-defense and form militia-like organizations for private rights enforcement. In all these places, some bastard gets in charge of it and starts treating everyone like shit. Quis custodiet, etc. How do I fire my private-rights enforcement group again?

It's important not to fetishize the right of self-defense out of all proportion. I could be as heavily armed as I like, but I have to sleep sometime, and if I'm home alone with my children and fifty armed guys show up, I'm still screwed. Personally, I'd like to be able to call 911 and have the cops show up (I figure I could hold even 50 guys off that long, with a defensible position and a sniper rifle). In the libertarian utopia, those guys outside would be the cops. I know that there are places in the world where the cops are the bad guys. But this is a problem which we know, empirically, can be fixed. It seems to me there are insuperable, structural difficulties in proposing that private organizations take over all the functions of the state, which have to do with human nature. People will be bastards if you give them a chance. Stipulating this feature away does not make for good political practice. See: communism, passim.

And that is why I blogrolled them. They got long knives and steady hands.

So it turns out I wasn't imagining things. My fair state of Massachusetts shed jobs faster than any other since 2001. Guess when I moved here? Guess how long Goodwife Two-Cents has been looking for a full-time job? Guess where we're thinking of moving out of?

Just another bit of the scintillating glory that is the Bay State. It's a matter of tradeoffs. Want salt air, quaint villages, colonial houses, fried full-belly clams, polo matches open to the public on Sundays, a plethora of organic farms, the best Universities in the world, Moxie, Sky Bars, and cod fresh of the boat? You got it! Want miserably corrupt state politics, miserably corrupt local politics, bad roads, terrible signage, crumbling infrastructure, job loss, a cultural divide, meaningless traditions, outrageous local pollution, a cost of living higher than almost any other, and a yearly crop of the products of the best Universities in the world willing to work for much less than you? Well, ya got that too! Enjoy, sucker!

Yesterday, while home sick nursing a case of what, if it wasn't actually the SARS or at least the Avian Flu, certainly felt like it-- shapes in the wallpaper, struggling to breathe, disturbingly high tolerance for daytime television-- I had occasion to watch Fox News.

Now, I kind of enjoy Fox News' teletabloid style, reminiscent of the New York Post (another News Corp. holding) or the nad-hammering attack-doggery of the Boston Herald. But sometimes-- often, for my moderate blood-- they just go too goddamn far.

I was watching coverage of this story, about the two unfortunate civilians working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, who were shot at a fake roadblock checkpoint yesterday. The TV version of the story referred to this as a "terrorist" incident.

No, No, NO!

I remember what a terrorist attack looks like. This was an act of war. It makes me crazy that acts of terrorism and acts of war are so often conflated by the press and politicians. To be sure, the two are often hard to pick apart these days. We are at war with terrorists and thugs. But if Fox News wants to be horribly irresponsible in the name of ratings and call two victims of a checkpoint shooting "terrorism" than the word becomes weaker, less able to describe the mayhem and horror of a true terrorist attack, especially in the same news cycle that sees nearly 200 die in Madrid at the hands of extremists.

The Justice Department "is dropping its demand, at least for now, that six Planned Parenthood clinics around the country produce medical records on abortions, officials said Tuesday." This according to the New York Times. Thank God.

In their zeal to prosecute offenders under the new Partial Birth Abortion law, the Justice Department has stated that patients now have "no reasonable expectation" that their medical records may remain private, and goen ahead with wide-ranging subpoenas of individual patient records. Excuse me, what the fuck? Didn't the "Patients' Bill of Rights" pass in 2000, and with it a law protecting the privacy of medical records? Part of the very fabric of the doctor-patient relationship is based on the absolute confidentiality of what goes on.

And now that it's politicially convenient, the Patients' Bill of Rights is no good? Look, this is crazy. There are still subpoenas outstanding elsewhere demanding individual patient records. The bitter, rancorous debate over abortion notwithstanding, this is just crazy and has to stop.

[wik] William Safire opines.

[alsø wik] Now I remember! I first saw this on Kathy Kinsley's site! Yesterday was a bad, bad day for my brain.