Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Oh, whatEVER!

These sentences were in the State of the Union speech last night. None of them is true.

“We found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state seven thousand miles away…”
It's 6000 miles between New York City and Baghdad. If you started from Hawaii and went the wrong way around the world, I suppose you would get to 7000 miles. Is that what he meant? Or did he just not look at a globe?

“We will also lead a nationwide effort...to deliver rapid HIV tests to millions...”
Great, but when you did this before, you un-linked the testing from counseling. Brilliant.

“...the tax relief you passed has left 880 billion dollars in the hands of American workers…”
I could have sworn it was $350 billion -and very little of it ended up in the hands or pockets of American workers. How much did you see?

“...we have spent nearly 10 billion dollars to develop cleaner, cheaper, more reliable alternative energy sources…”
I'm just confused as hell about this one. The Department of Energy reports a budget of $2.5 billion for energy. The rest of the budget is divied up among the environment, defense, and science. Environment got $8.6 billion, so there's $10 billion, except there's no way the whole 8.6 OR 2.5 went for alternative energy. Not according to their officially published budgets, anyway.

“So far the Federal government has committed 85 billion dollars to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans…”
I can't even get close to this number with the budgets I've found. Admittedly, the funding is scattered here, there, and everywhere in the budget and I haven't looked all that hard. But there's the famous $6.2 billion for rebuilding homes outside the poorest areas. The Defense Department has about $4 billion allocated. There's the cost for trailers and the inevitable costs for rebuilding the levees, which have only been patched so far. I'm STILL not at 85 billion.

Mr. Numbers Guy with whom I live has a bruise on his forehead from banging his head on the desk. Do you suppose we could sue?

No comments: