Against it all

I don't even like the Democrats that much. On trade, they sold their souls, and it wasn't even for rock n' roll. That I could understand. They're nowhere on health care reform, and their answers on foreign policy are that they're not George Bush.

But it's that last point that has me pulling for them. In a sane world, that Party A is not the Party B would not be significant enough for me bust my ass for their election prospects. But not being the Republicans these days is saying something. We don't live in a sane world. We live in one where the following seems like sound government policy:

The bureaucratic brainstorm was straightforward — simple-minded is, perhaps, a more appropriate description — don't pay doctors, hospitals and their army of auxiliaries tending to indisposed old folks and the afflicted disabled for their labors in the last nine days of the current fiscal year. Instead, send them a check for what you owe them, sometime after the first of October, the start of the government's fiscal '07. In essence, those doctors, hospitals et al. are making an involuntary loan of nine days' pay without interest.

That way, point out the gleeful budgeteers and Medicare pooh-bahs, all of whom presumably are glowing with health, Uncle Sam's Medicare tab this fading fiscal year will be $5.2 billion less than it otherwise would have been. Or at least would seem to be $5.2 billion less — in Washington, as we all know, appearance and reality are not invariably the same phenomena.

Got that? The Republican idea of sound government doesn't mean making it more sound, gosh no. It means not paying people for vital services they're rendering, all in the name of saving a few bucks to make your budget forcast sound more palatable for voters.

Bedtime for demoracy indeed.