Numbers

In the movie, "Good Will Hunting" a scene occurs when the seemingly malleable Matt Damon character foreshadows his deeper fearlessness by challenging a full-of-himself BMOC with the philosophically imponderable: "How d'ya like dem apples?" Well, today we have, "How d'ya like dem numbers?"

To wit:
157      New panels and commissions created
1,000s  New political appointees – most start at $67,500 per year
10,000s New Federal employees for just those commissions’ staffs
16,000  New IRS agents to enforce the HC bill and to collect insurance premiums/taxes
50,000,000  New, additional people alleged by Democrats to receive insurance
11,000,000 Actual number of newly eligible who are:
   A. Not illegal
   B. Transient between jobs, and
   C. Willing to purchase insurance

And then there's this:

66% U.S. population who believe that the HC Bill will make things worse
65% Rasmussen poll results of US population opposed to HC Bill at time of vote
50.3% Percentage of House of Representatives who voted the HR Bill into law over the strenuous objections of the two figures immediately above.

Other numbers, such as the understated costs and the overstated revenues lose meaning when needing to have 12 zeroes lined up behind them; so also when conjuring imaginative numeric metaphors like the stars in the sky, angels on a pin, chad in Florida or the blatant misstatements made by the poseur president. That doesn’t even touch on the little matter of counting the Medicare money twice. How is it that the press hasn’t skewered that matter?

No conversation on the subject of government and governing is thorough without citing the pathetic lapse, the maladroit casting of the national dialogue by a malpracticing press.

Mr. Boehner is right, of course, in calling shame upon Pelosi and her confederates. But face it, like the Irishman who was told on the occasion of being bitten by the snake he had taken in and nursed back to health, “You knew I was a snake when you met me!” Pelosi, Reid, Durbin without any shame evident whatsoever even forsaked their professed religions' core tenets to win this political prize. That itself delineates their reptilian natures more than mere words could ever do effectively. (Come to think of it, it was the snake Satan impersonated in Eden to offer Adam and Eve the conceit to believe they were greater than and independent of God, our Creator. Hmmmmm.)

No, the real shame inures to a press profession that would have us believe that it is objective and thoughtful. Emotionally charged sentimental slop, yes. They can ooze that all day long. But hard data? No. Too much thinking required there. Since it can’t seem to gather critical facts especially when they are numeric, much less triage them, it is not in the cards to expect them to report, certainly not to evaluate, numbers.

Maybe we should think of the press as a cold blooded reptilian crawler whose arithmetic skills are limted to the number of appendages they have.