Perfume Making Follow

Once in a while you put down your morning paper and think: My government is just a vast criminal enterprise. It's the Mob, only with taxing authority. [And I wrote this even without seeing the latest bulletin. More here.] The Monica Goodling story is a guaranteed apoplexy-inducer. Alberto Gonzales will have us believe that it's impossible to supervise every junior employee. But Goodling, as "she who must be obeyed," clearly wore the perfume of the specially favored. My guess is that her ideological agenda (including making sure job applicants didn't care about the spotted owl!) could not have been more obvious had she scripted it in a neon sign jutting on her head. The central irony is that she funneled ideologues and political hacks into non-political civil service jobs -- and so, by definition, they can't be removed through the political appointment process. This is political pollution of the civil service watershed. [I'd work on that metaphor to make it better but I am about to go on vacation and it'll have to do.] Meanwhile the budget mess borders on fraud. Executives go to jail for cooking the books in the private sector, but in the federal government it's standard operating procedure. Read Jonathan Weisman's story today and see for yourself: the FY '09 budget deficit won't really be $482 billion, because that number doesn't count the housing bail-out just passed by Congress, or the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the real costs of Medicare, or the real effects of the torpid economy. The deficit is very likely going to be roughlyas large as the Pentagon budget. Which is very large, equal to what the next 15 countries on the planet spend on their militaries. Neither Obama nor McCain are willing to admit that these numbers constrain their choices. Both are advocating policies that will cost trillions -- trillions and trillions! -- of dollars over the next decade. I need a vacation. -- Am still reeling from Steinberg's assertion that he blogs 8 times a day. I mean, that's a good fortnight for me. [Pause to savor pleasure of using the word "fortnight."] [Remind me to blog someday on the need to restore cubits as commonplace units of measurement.] Quick, without Googling, these are units of measurement of WHAT: 1. Joule 2. Newton 3. Ampere 4. Candela 5. Mole Here's the answer. -- Via Liz Donovan (at Infomaniac), here's Craig Stoltz (a very smart former Postie -- not sure if the "very smart" and "former" are connected, but could be) on 5 tips for better blogging. [Some very good tips in there. I'm now inspired to post a photo! I'll look for something that evokes the wisdom of the A-blog.]